


With All But His Soul

by Resamille



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: A Very Unconventional Dinner Party, Allura is Not Cool With the Shenanigans Happening, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Animal Death, Asexual Lance, Balmeran Magic bullshit, Blood, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Homesickness, Injury, Kidnapping, Lance (Voltron)-centric, Losing a limb, Mentions of Panic Attacks, Nightmares, Poisoning/contamination, Psychological Horror, Returning to Earth, The Team Is Doing A Concern, canon-divergent, copious amounts of angst, elemental powers, non-consensual body-modification, nonconsensual mind-meld, pre-lion-swaps, sorry lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-03-23 07:02:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13782264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Resamille/pseuds/Resamille
Summary: Somewhere along the line, Lance lost himself, replaced with something fierce and foreign.The worst part?He can't bring himself to want to go back. Like this, he's improved. He's a fighter, a perfect soldier. No more nightmares. No more homesickness. No more weakness. It's better, that way. He's better.





	1. ...and so he left

**Author's Note:**

> For the Event Horizon Horror Bang.
> 
> All the love to my awesome partner for this bang!! Check them out on tumblr at cupcakeismynamebitchez
> 
> damn i can't believe i lived through this holy shit

**772 Days Before**

The blue lights of the Castle, dimmed to mimic nighttime, cast an eerie glow across the halls. If Lance is correct, they've been here for about five months, and yet the cool air of the Castle of Lions is no more inviting than when they'd first arrived. Peering out of his room, Lance scans for anyone lurking in the halls. It's unlikely, but not an unfounded concern. Sometimes Shiro paces when he can't sleep, Keith loses track of how long he trains and comes back late, Hunk goes for midnight snacks, and Pidge periodically forgets what a bed is in favor of crashing on the nearest horizontal surface.

At night, the Castle is kept cool to ease their rest, but Lance can't find it in himself to be grateful for it now, rubbing his hands over his arms to bring some warmth to his skin as he slinks from his door and down the hall. The blue light of Altea beckons him, guiding, and Lance feels a chill run down his spine for a completely different reason: his house always had yellow-tinted lights. Now, the blue hue seems _too cold, too foreign, too unkind_. Trying to ignore his unease, Lance ducks his head and quickens his pace.

He tries not to think about home. The pain is just a bit too sharp under his ribs. Memory haunts him.

He once had grandiose dreams of fame, of becoming a well-known, respected fighter pilot. He wanted to be someone his younger siblings could look up to. Now, though, he's the lost boy, trapped in the stars he once longed so strongly for, only to find them unwelcoming and alien in all senses of the word.

Lance's skin crawls with the prickle of goosebumps as he makes his way towards the medbay. He's adamantly refusing to acknowledge the dull ache of pain at his side, twin lacerations over the right side of his ribcage. They're only a few hours old, fresh from the mission earlier that day. Part of him regrets hiding the wounds, as they brand a pulsing ache into his skin, but he didn't want to worry the others, and deeper in his heart, he has to face the fact he was scared to admit he'd gotten hurt.

It's one thing to not be useful as a soldier; it's another thing to be a burden.

So ever since they started this mess, once Lance realized he was the one most often being stuffed in the pods—even Keith's foolhardy recklessness didn't have Lance's incompetence beat—he'd begun hiding the damage. Often it's just scrapes and bruises, things that hardly warrant a healing pod in the first place, but this is the worst he's kept secret.

Lance's right side throbs, sporadic in pain, and he winces, though his steps don't falter. He's not even entirely sure where he got the wounds, either. They might be evidence of a Galra's claws, or maybe just a bad run-in with the jungle planet's foliage. The battles often move too quickly for Lance to keep a constant assessment of his body. Everything becomes distant, and the world narrows down to the heartbeat before pulling the trigger.

The team can't blame Lance for hiding this sort of thing. He barely registers it himself, and honestly it's not worth bothering them over. At least, that's what he tells himself on repeat, because he knows he _shouldn't_ do this sort of thing—bad decisions are Keith's forte, not Lance's, and Shiro would probably have his head if it wasn't more useful still attached to Lance's shoulders. Hunk would probably start crying if Lance got so much as a papercut, because that actually did happen once at the Garrison. It's part of Hunk's charm. And—well, actually, Pidge might not care that much. Maybe he should at least tell Pidge so that way they can work out some sort of buddy-system self-preservation deal.

Then again, he doesn't actually know Pidge that well. He still can't believe he didn't realize they were female (though, by now, they've asked to try out they pronouns, so female isn't strictly the right word). And obviously Keith isn’t exactly the type Lance would go when he’s wounded. Keith’s too busy rushing into battle to notice when he’s wounded, much less anyone else on the team. Except Shiro. He’d probably notice Shiro.

In the end, that leaves Lance with approximately no one he can get to check up on him.

Though, as Lance slips into the medbay, surrounded by Altean tech, he's reminded that the other paladins aren't the only ones on the ship. Allura and Coran care for him to some degree, at least in a selfish capacity because Lance is useful to them as a paladin. Allura doesn't seem to like him too much, not for lack of trying, but maybe Coran could keep Lance from running himself ragged.

Lance likes them both well enough. Allura has an aura of importance about her and always has her Princess of Altea mask on, hiding her loss behind a cool exterior. She doesn't let Lance in very often, if at all. But Coran is more relatable. They both hide their emotions behind a bold laugh and cheerful voice, but Lance has let Coran see his vulnerability, and Coran has slipped Lance glimpses of his.

A kinship, Lance thinks, built on a profound sense of longing for those loved and lost.

Lance accidentally knocks his hip into one of the monitoring systems as he shuffles towards a pod. It flares to life, bright light harsh on Lance's eyes, adjusted to the dim of the halls. He lets out a squawk of protest, stumbling backwards, and bumps into a metal table. The clang of tools echoes harshly around the room, ringing in ears adjusted to the silence. Lance clamps his hand over his mouth, unintentionally cutting off a sharp inhale of breath. For a moment, his body panics as he suffocates before his muscles remember how to work and he drags air in between his fingers.

He hopes the medbay is far enough from the sleeping quarters that no one heard him. He's come this far. The others can't find out now.

Frozen, Lance waits for the sound of footsteps, breathing shallow and sharp but heated against his palm.

The seconds drag on, and Lance's lungs burn in his chest. He can feel his heartbeat in the wounds on his side, pounding.

But the only sounds are the gentle hum of the Castle's machinery and the methodical beep of the monitoring system Lance had accidentally booted up.

Lance drops his hand and breathes out slowly, and then gasps harshly when his side twinges in pain. Something doesn't feel right, and Lance turns to let the glow of the computer cast its blue glow over his torso. Carefully, Lance presses his fingers into the dark splotch of shadow on his shirt, and fear slices through him when he feels something wet, the pain registering afterward. Raising his right arm too high hurts a _lot_ , so he uses his opposite hand to gingerly lift his shirt, angling himself awkwardly to be able to see.

He sucks in a quick breath—regrets it instantly when it feels like knives are stabbing into him. Earlier, the wounds had been ragged but relatively superficial. The undersuit of the paladin armor had been enough to staunch the blood flow, but now dark liquid trickles down Lance's side from the two gashes. The skin around them is puffy, probably inflamed, though Lance can't really tell in the shadows of the room.

So maybe he should have admitted he needed a pod earlier today, but it's too late now. Whatever it is making the wounds worse, Lance just hopes the pod can fix it. Considering how well it fixed up his back after the Castle’s power supply exploded, Lance isn't too concerned. Still, he's pretty freaked about the wounds, simply because he really doesn't remember how they got there or what kinda shit might have got in them since.

As Lance struggles to take his shirt off without moving his right arm too much, he makes a mental note to be a bit more careful. He cringes at the thought of sweat and grime getting into the wounds, but that’s presuming his suit wasn’t compromised. If it was? There’s an entire alien jungle that might be living under his skin.

The chill pricks against his shoulders as he finally gets his shirt off and readies a pod. Lance has the sinking feeling he's being watched.

It's unlikely—he knows that. It doesn't stop him from looking over his shoulder. Eventually his gaze flicks up to the camera near the doorway. The Castle monitors all the main rooms that are likely to host visitors, but since they haven't had any refugees on board recently, there's no reason for anyone to check the surveillance system. Lance isn't too worried about the team finding out that way, but he should probably figure out a way to turn off the camera or delete the footage. Something to cover his tracks.

The pod beeps, signaling it's ready, and Lance turns from peering over his shoulder to step carefully into the machine. It's marginally warmer than the open air of the medbay, and Lance takes a deep breath as the pod closes him in. Just like taking a nap, he tells himself. He won't notice the time lost between trips in and out of the pod, only recognize the sense of lacking in his brain as evidence of having been in one. It's always like that: a lingering nothingness. It's restorative, but unlike sleep, it's not restful.

Lance will regret his time spent here and not in his bed during training tomorrow, when his body and mind are slow with exhaustion.

As the healing pod slowly numbs the pain in Lance's side, his mind supplies a new agony to make up for it. It wanders to where his unintended musings always take him: home.

Lance can't feel the tears fall as he thinks of his family, but he does feel the burn of them behind his eyelids. The healing pod can’t numb that hurt.

 

When Lance stumbles out of the pod, gasping and clutching onto the nearest surface to keep from falling, he finds himself clinging onto the monitoring system. A humanoid model stares back at him, two red marks on its side as it reports the result of the most recent scan, a blinking indicator of the damage on his body. Lance swears, and tries to shut down the system to hide the evidence of his presence, but instead he unintentionally opens another window.

It takes a moment for the Castle's translation system to resolve itself from Altean to something Lance can read: _Foreign contaminant found_ , it tells him in big white letters, a red exclamation mark flashing on either side in warning.

Lance blinks at the screen, and swallows through a dry throat.

Slowly, he closes the window, and shuts down the system. His fingers tremble as he taps on the screen, and he's still shaking by the time he sneaks back into his room. Lance leans against the door, taking in measured breaths, trying to calm his beating heart. He feels fine. He's fine. He's completely fine. Nothing wrong. His fingers press into the place where the gashes once were, and now there are only two faint scars that he can barely pinpoint when he brushes his hands over his ribs.

See? Nothing to worry about. Absolutely—nothing at all. He’s been exposed to alien junk plenty of times, so why does it matter if some gets inside him every occasionally? It’ll be perfectly fine.

Nope, definitely not fine. Not okay. Nope. Nope.

Nausea curls in Lance’s gut, the spike of panicked adrenaline that shoots through him in reaction only worsening the sensation. He tilts his head back, trying desperately not to throw up.

It's as he's leaning against the cool metal of the door to his room, letting the chill sink into the flushed skin of his shoulders, that Lance realizes he's forgotten his shirt in the medbay.

He doesn't want to go back. He doesn’t want to see the pods. He doesn’t want to remember.

 _Foreign contaminant found_. The words are written on his eyelids.

He doesn’t even know what it means, but it terrifies him. What—what if he’s dying?

No, the healing pod wouldn’t let him out if he was sick. So, it should… Actually be fine, right? He should be okay? Maybe he swallowed a bug or something and it’ll pass through his system, harmless. Yeah, that’s probably it.

Lance slowly picks himself up off the wall, feeling lightheaded. He glances towards the weird not-clock near his bed that indicates how long until the Castle determines it to be “daytime.” Four vargas? Stupid Altean time constructs. Not long, at least.

He must have been in the pod longer than he thought.

Seems to be happening more often recently.

With a deep breath, Lance resigns himself to the fact that after another trip sneaking into the medbay he's not going to sleep at all tonight.

The eerie blue of the Castle’s lights follows him.

Whatever the thing—the _contaminant_ —is, it’s a part of him now.

 

 

**653 Days Before**

Lance reaches out a hand, clasping onto the forearm of the Valisi prince, an Altean greeting. “It's a pleasure to meet you,” he says smoothly. “My name is Lance, the Blue Paladin.”

Behind him, Keith snorts softly at Lance's formality, and Lance hopes the prince didn't hear. Lance thinks that's decidedly unfair because the last time they had an alliance meeting, Keith got mad at him for laying the charm on too thick. So really, Keith can go screw himself.

“Elatha,” hums the prince, voice deep and velvet. There's a controlled power in his limbs, muscle under midnight skin. The Valisi are relatively humanoid—similar to Alteans, Lance thinks, though Allura would probably be able to explain each and every way in which they were _not_ the same. Though, Lance can see that unlike Alteans, which tend to have at least some physical distinction between gender roles, the Valisi all have the same build: broad shoulders, slim waist, sharp jawlines.

But even that, though intimidating, is not their most significant feature. Where Allura and Coran sport their faint facial markings, the Valisi have taken it to the next level. Their bodies and limbs are adorned by gorgeous metallic filigree. It shimmers against their dark-toned skin, and for a moment, Lance has to remind himself not to stare at the beauty of it.

Flicking his eyes back to Elatha's face, Lance sends a charming smile towards the prince. “We're grateful for your hospitality,” he says, sweet.

“Only the most lavish for the Paladins of Voltron,” Elatha hums.

Lance takes a moment to look around the room, appreciating the grand ballroom. The high ceilings are decorated with some sort of gold trim, looping and cascading towards Lance's head, and the design reminds him of the Valisi's markings. He wonders if that's on purpose. There are no windows in the walls of the room (not that it's needed, with the expanse of space), but the roof opens in a circular view of the night sky. There are a few other openings in the ceiling, too, but they're covered with some sort of sheer fabric that casts colored shimmer onto the guests directly below.

Really, Lance wouldn't be surprised if this is the “most lavish,” as Elatha says, because this is the most elegant celebration Lance has ever seen. It's not that other planets aren't grateful, but they just don't have the same sort of lifestyle or—honestly, money—as the Valisi. Unlike most members of the Voltron Alliance, the Valisi are not an oppressed peoples hoping for rescue from Galra rule. No, instead they are a separate empire, far removed enough from the Galra to be left alone, but close enough to feel the growing threat.

Their expertise with tech, Lance remembers Allura explaining, is what has kept them hidden for so long.

Lance's gaze trails along the skylight, watching as a star at the edge blinks into darkness before returning. He squints for a moment before turning to Elatha. “If I'm honest,” Lance says, “I'm not sure if we're worth all this.” He laughs, soft and light. “We've done nothing to deserve this from you.”

“You've brought hope with you,” Elatha says. “My people aren't helpless, no, but the Galra are too strong to be defeated alone. Voltron is a solution that doesn't involve some inevitable end.”

Lance licks his lips. Holy shit. Do they really mean that much? “Well, hopefully we will remain strong in this together.”

“Yes,” says Elatha. His fingers brush Lance's shoulder, and Lance realizes it was because his attention was straying again.

“Sorry,” he quickly breathes.

Elatha smiles, laughter in his eyes. “Do you miss flying?” he asks.

Lance let's out a surprised little laugh. “What makes you ask that?”

“I presumed the stars were calling to you,” Elatha explains, as if this a very reasonable thing. And maybe it is. Lance relates, he supposes, in the way he longs for home. Earth, to the Valisi, is just some distant star, beyond their knowledge.

“I suppose,” Lance hums thoughtfully. “Your night is different from mine. It just reminds me how vast the universe is.”

“Vast, indeed,” Elatha agrees. “So much power, so much knowledge. So few who hold it. It's a shame, for both to be so inaccessible. There is so much more we can do together.” He turns to regard Lance. “It is good that Voltron is a team. This is no fight to go through alone.”

Lance heart swells for his friends, in a rare moment of the recognition that, despite everything he's lost, this what he still _has_. He opens his mouth to reply, but doesn't manage words because something about Elatha's quiet contemplation has touched his heart. All Lance can manage is a nod, before unconsciously turning to search the crowd for his teammates.

Hunk and Shiro are across the room—he catches glimpses of them between the light fabric draped over Valisi shoulders—both of them picking at the tables of food. Shiro's shoulders shake with laughter at something, and Lance sees a sliver of Hunk's wide grin from the angle he's watching them from. He doesn't really know what to expect happened to Keith, but then spots him with Allura, chatting with a circle of Valisi. And Pidge—Pidge is barreling towards him with no regard for the fact they're in a ballroom full of people they're trying to _impress_.

“Lance!” Pidge squeaks, excitement pouring off them as they barely manage to keep themselves from slamming into Lance. “ _Lance_ , oh my God, you have to hear about the technology they have here, _holy shit_.”

And Lance really hates to channel his inner Shiro, but really, Pidge and Keith both rank lowest on the noticing-social-cues totem pole. So he scowls down at them slightly, trying to scold them with his gaze in the same way Shiro conveys excessive disappointment in a single look. He probably fails, but hey, at least Shiro can't say he didn't try. Turning to Elatha while Pidge catches their breath, Lance says, “Forgive them. This is Pidge, the Green Paladin. They're our tech expert, so you can understand their enthusiasm, I hope.”

Elatha smiles, and Lance wonders if he's been doing that more often on this night versus others. The prince holds out an arm to Pidge in greeting. “My pleasure.”

Pidge recovers enough to clasp their arm alongside Elatha's. Lance has to give them credit there—at least they pay attention while Allura is explaining cultural customs. Which means Pidge probably ranks higher than Keith on being socially adept.

“Thank you for having us,” Pidge replies, though their voice is still a little breathy.

“So you've heard our plans for our medbots?” Elatha asks.

“Yes!” Pidge squeals. Robots are the first way to Pidge's heart. Just in the same way food is the way to woo Hunk, and knives for Keith. Lance wonders absently what Shiro's weakness is. Maybe a nap. He definitely needs one of those.

“What do you think?” Elatha grins at the way Pidge practically vibrates.

“I'm—I'm stunned,” says Pidge, sounding legitimately awed. “On Earth, there's a sort of lingering fear about giving robots independent thought, but you're going even further and giving them _wills_. Not only to do whatever task they're assigned, but also to create and invent and feel, and, while I don't know if that means they're robots still, it's... Impressive, at the very least. Of course, then you might start running into issues like robot depression.”

Elatha chuckles. “Perhaps,” he says. “But for now it has mostly remained relatively simple. Our greatest goal would be able to create something as sentient as the lions, but... I fear that is too ambitious.”

Pidge lets out a low whistle. “While I hate to dash your hopes, I might have to agree. The lions are... Something else. I don't even understand them in their entirety. They're—” Pidge waves their hand in the air, looking for the right word.

“Otherworldly,” Lance supplies.

“Other-universe-ly,” Pidge says, probably in a mix of striving for accuracy and an attempt to piss off Lance. “And—”

Blue suddenly screeches against Lance's mind, and for a moment he goes breathless from the force of it. “—under attack,” he wheezes at Pidge.

“What?” Pidge and Elatha both question at the same time, and then all the lights in the room go out.

The ballroom is suddenly bathed in darkness and panic.

Pidge reaches out for Lance's arm, and he feels their fingers dig into his shoulder. Blue quiets her fear into whimpers, soft pleas for Lance to be okay, for him to come for her, for them to get through this.

There's a scream from somewhere behind them, and Lance drags Pidge's small frame with him as he whirls gaze searching futilely in the dark. The sounds of a struggle—soft shuffling noises, thuds of impact, the scrapes and tear of claws and clothing—erupt around him. Lance reaches for his bayard, and then feels his spine tense with panic when he realizes that he doesn't have his armor. No one does.

Nearby, maybe, maybe, someone cries out, voice sharp with anger and reaction. Lance flinches hard, pulling Pidge along with him as he feels the harsh swipe of air from someone's stray limb.

And then, suddenly, a pair of eyes, glowing in the dark.

Lance lets out a panicked screech.

“Let's _go_ ,” Keith hisses, breath hot against Lance's face.

“Oh, fuck,” Lance breathes out, body pounding with adrenaline. He feels the fear rush out of him in and instant, and lets Keith grab at his arm and drag him away.

Outside of the ballroom, Hunk and Pidge rush to meet them.

Lance feels his blood run cold.

Who'd been holding onto him?

“Where's Shiro?” Pidge asks.

Keith freezes, grip on Lance's upper arm going tight enough to hurt. “He's not here?”

“I haven't seen him,” Pidge says, biting their lip.

“Oh noooo,” Hunk cries, wringing his hands together. He looks about two seconds away from a meltdown.

“I'm going to find him,” Keith announces, and Lance catches his arm before he runs back into the darkness of the room.

“I'm going with you.”

“You can't see in there for shit,” Keith deadpans. “And you're defenseless.”

“And you'll rush into the first hint of danger and get yourself killed or kidnapped.”

“I'll go with Keith, then,” Pidge says.

“No,” Keith and Lance both say at the same time. So they might be a bit protective of the youngest paladin.

Keith glares at Lance, eyes glinting yellow, reflective like a cat's. “Fine,” he grits out. “Keep up.”

“Allura went back to the Castle,” Pidge says. “Lions should be on their way. Hunk, come with me—stop freaking out—we're on refugee detail. Put on your rescuer face.”

“Still freaking out,” Hunk says.

“Well, at least don't look like.”

“ _Come on_ ,” Keith huffs, pulling Lance by the arm.

Lance stumbles after him, and then moves to clutch at Keith's wrist, allowing himself to be led back into the room.

“There aren't any stars,” Lance notes, squinting up into the dark.

“What?” Keith hisses. “There's no one here.”

“Someone's covered the skylight,” Lance says. “I don't think this is a Galra attack.”

“No shit, there's no cruisers.”

“They don't always go in guns blazing,” Lance points out as Keith weaves his way around the room. Something makes a wet sound as Lance steps, and he winces. “I really hope that was wine.”

“It wasn't,” Keith informs him.

“You didn't need to tell me that.” Lance takes in a shaky breath. “I think this might be a rebel group or something.”

Keith suddenly rips his arm from Lance's grip. “Drop your weapon!”

There's the sound of movement. “Red Paladin, I—”

Lance recognizes that voice.

“I said _drop it_ ,” Keith growls.

“Keith, you moron, that's the prince. Elatha, do you know what's going on?”

Keith makes a huffing noise somewhere near Lance's shoulder, probably unhappily allowing that Elatha is on their side.

“The Valisi are not without enemies. I believe we've been ambushed,” Elatha says. “For any number of possible reasons.”

“The skylight,” Lance realizes. “I _did_ see someone up there.”

“Yeah, some good that did us,” Keith grumbles. “Where is everyone?”

“Most of the fighting moved deeper into the palace.”

“Take me there,” Keith demands.

“Given the carnage of this event,” Elatha begins dubiously. “I believe I know which faction is responsible for this. That being said, I doubt the path to the palace heart will be clear.”

“I need to find Shiro,” Keith states.

“You realize he's not defenseless, right?” Lance says. “Glowy hand and all.”

Keith growls, something borderline inhuman.

Lance makes a huffing noise right back at him.

Elatha breathes out slowly. “Follow me.”

Keith grabs at Lance fingers curling into his forearm. Lance honestly wouldn't be surprised if he wakes up tomorrow with bruises, but he lets Keith tug him along.

“Watch out,” Keith says, too late.

Lance trips over something, and he lands against the floor in a puddle of something. Fear lodges in his throat. “Fuck.”

“I don't think that's blood,” Keith says, sounding at least a tiny bit apologetic.

“Oh, thank God,” Lance breathes out.

“Can you not see?” Elatha asks.

“No,” Lance grits out, gathering his limbs underneath him. The fabric around his knees soaks with whatever liquid is spilled across the floor. Presuming Keith isn't lying, the fact it's not blood doesn't actually do much to stop the shudder of Lance's spine as he feels lukewarm fluid press against his skin.

“Let me,” Elatha says, and Lance squeaks as he's lifted into the air.

“I can still walk!” Lance yelps as Elatha manhandles him until he's being carried bridal-style.

Keith snorts, and there's a soft huffing noise that Lance realizes is Keith laughing.

“Oh, fuck you, Keith,” Lance growls.

Keith sobers instantly. “Let's go,” he tells Elatha.

They make their way through what Keith reports to be the ballroom and another few dark hallways before they finally reach an area Lance can see. It's dim—starlight casting the hall in marble-tinted hues.

“You can put me down,” Lance tells Elatha. “Thanks.”

“Be careful,” Elatha says. “I can see a few traps ahead. There are likely others.”

“Traps?” Keith asks.

“The faction I believe is responsible for the attack is a revolutionary group against our research with artificial intelligence, but they are not beyond the use of technology for their assaults. Unfortunately, I feel this attack is my fault. I was the one who ordered to lower our guards in preparation for the event tonight.”

“Yeah, we definitely weren't worth all the luxury if it got you guys attacked,” Lance says, squinting down the hall. “Where are the traps?”

“There,” Elatha says, pointing. “The wall should be smooth, but there's something attached. They're essentially tripwires, but without any visible wire.”

Lance stares in the direction. He can barely make out where a small protrusion bulges out from the wall.

“What happens if we touch it?” Lance asks.

“I presume you die,” Elatha says. “I would not recommend testing that theory.”

“Noted,” Lance says.

The sounds of a scuffle ahead clamps Lance's mouth shut. Concentration keeps his lips pressed together in a tight line as Keith jogs forward, vaulting easily over the height the trap. He lands silently, like a cat, and looks back with a hint of golden in his gaze.

Lance and Elatha follow at a slower pace, Elatha stepping carefully, each movement of his long limbs measured and controlled. He moves with a grace that Lance wishes he had. Instead he's gangly, clumsy with nerves as he stumbles over the invisible tripwire, feeling, already, that it was too close a call.

Keith is always two steps ahead of them, rushing forward.

“When did they have time to set this all up?” Lance whispers.

“It's likely they had someone on the inside,” Elatha murmurs back, reaching out an arm to steady Lance as he ducks around two traps. “Not all of our kind agree with our methods.”

“Are they particularly wrong?” Keith grumbles over his shoulder.

“I don't believe so,” Elatha says, tone mild. “It depends on whether you believe sentient is the same as alive.”

“That's a question for Pidge, not me,” Lance says.

“Sshh!” Keith hisses at them, and they freeze.

There's a cry from somewhere down the hallway.

Keith bolts.

Lance sees the trap attached to the wall a moment before Keith runs straight into it. He lunges forward. Lance grabs Keith by the back of his shirt collar and latches on, yanking him back. Keith's momentum drags Lance forward, and they both stumble forward.

When Lance recovers, he whirls to face a pair of glowing eyes.

Not Keith.

Lance falls back.

No, not falls. Pushed.

Too slow, he realizes what's happening.

There's a loud noise as his right leg passes through the invisible tripwire. His ears ring. His leg hurts.

What happened?

Blinking away dust and tears, Lance looks up to see Elatha. His mouth is moving, and the words come slower, muffled through pain.

“Lance,” Elatha is saying. “Are you...” His gaze flicks away from Lance's face to somewhere down Lance's body.

Lance decides it's better not to move.

What if he just... sleeps? Better. Much better.

Elatha scoops Lance into his arms, the second time that night.

“Lance,” Elatha says, voice kind and urgent. “Lance, stay with me.”

Lance slumps against Elatha's shoulder, letting his weight sink into the Valisi's arms. “You're pretty,” he says.

“Right,” Elatha says. “Tell me how I'm pretty. I need you to stay awake. Talk to me.”

“Pretty,” Lance repeats, unsure why Elatha needs him to elaborate. Why is the room spinning? “Pretty.”

“How pretty?” Elatha asks, sounding breathless. Is he running? Why is he running?

“So pretty.”

“What about me?”

“I like... your marks,” Lance decides after a long pause.

“Good, good. Keep going.”

Lance feels his brow furrow. His eyes flutter close. “Tired,” he says.

“No, no, stay awake,” Elatha says.

“Leg hurts.”

“I know. I'm sorry.”

“Your fault?”

Elatha's arms tighten around Lance's body. There's a jolt, and Elatha doesn't respond because instead he's yelling something intelligible. Lance thinks it's loud. Too loud. Like explosions. His leg hurts. Brain hurts.

Darkness consumes.

 

Lance wakes to sensation of drowning.

When he was young, swimming with his family, one of his siblings had been pretending to be a shark. Jonathon had grabbed Lance's ankle and pulled and pulled, dragging him down. Lance might have been a pretty good swimmer, but even he wasn't prepared for the sudden rush of water over his head. He remembers how it had filled his lungs, how he'd come up, coughing, eyes watering, chest burning.

He remembers the rush of being _alive_.

Suddenly the world flashes into existence, and everything is too bright. The starlight flooding—his?—room hurts his eyes, and he gasps for air, pain shooting down his spine the moment he tries to move.

“Stay still,” someone says nearby. Shiro. That's Shiro's voice.

“Wha...” Lance croaks.

“Water?” Shiro offers.

Lance nods, and Shiro presses a straw to Lance's lips. “I got it,” he says when Lance's hand twitches. “You just drink.”

Lance takes in a deep breath, air, sweet air, filling his lungs. He drinks.

“You're starting to make this a trend,” Shiro says softly. “Jumping in front of others when they're about to get hurt.”

Lance halfheartedly shrugs.

“Lance, you almost died.”

Lance releases the straw and sticks his tongue out. Shiro pulls the pouch away. “Keith was gonna...” Lance starts, and then furrows his brow. “What happened?”

“Can you feel your leg?” Shiro asks.

Lance blinks at him. “Yeah. Hurts.”

“Good,” Shiro breathes out, more to himself than Lance. “The... The Valisi had to...” he swallows. “I'm not sure if 'replace' is the correct word.”

Lance's slow thoughts come to an immediate halt. “What?”

“We couldn't get you back to the Castle to a pod in time,” Shiro says softly. “And even then, I'm not sure what we'd be able to salvage. The Valisi are especially adept with medical tech. They gave you a prosthetic, essentially, but... It's different.”

Lance feels his heart sink into his stomach.

“The materials they have are far more advanced than even the Galra techs. They're more natural. In theory, you won't be able to tell the difference, but somehow I... doubt that. You don't really recover from losing a limb. You adapt.”

“Holy shit,” Lance chokes out, and then promptly leans over the side of the cot he's in to vomit onto the floor.

Shiro rubs Lance's shoulder gingerly. He seemed to be expecting this.

 

 

**641 Days Before**

They can hear the whispers follow them.

Each time they've stopped at a swap moon—space mall, tiny market, or sprawling bazaar—the rumors have grown louder. The havoc left at the space mall was one thing, but once the name of Voltron started making itself known around the universe, the voices haunted them.

“...aladins? Didn't they...”

“...the red one... Zarkon...”

“...Green? Small...”

“...what I wouldn't do...”

Some of the braver ones reach Lance's ears in their entirety.

“What are they doing here?”

“Ugh, they look so full of themselves.”

“Some saviors, parading around like they own the place.”

“Do you think they'd give me their autograph?”

“The blue one's pretty.”

Lance smirks at that.

“Yeah, yeah, don't let it go to your head,” Pidge quips from his side, obviously also listening to the gossip. “We're here for a reason.”

Lance shrugs one shoulder, letting his gaze wander over Pidge's head. He spies a slender alien with a snout like a vole peering at them and stares back for a moment, blue ice against steely black. “Yeah,” he says, narrowing his gaze at the creature before turning away to watch where he's walking. “But they think I'm pretty.”

“Whatever,” Pidge tells him. “Have you seen our contact?”

“I have no idea what our contact looks like,” Lance informs them.

“And whose fault is that?” Pidge snarks.

“Well, obviously Allura's. She trains us so hard, I slept through the debriefing.”

“Likely story,” Pidge deadpans.

“Well, what do you want me to tell you? I went on some crazy mission in the middle of the night and single-handedly defeated the Galra Empire?”

“Well, if you're going to lie to me, you might as well make it interesting,” Pidge says.

Lance scoffs. “Well, sorry. I was tired. That's it.”

Which is true, yes, but Lance doesn't tell them the real reason why. He doesn't mention the nightmares that cling like the scent of gun smoke to his clothes. He doesn't tell them about the battered faces of his family, beaten and bloodied by the boots of Galra drones. No, Lance doesn't want to talk about the screams he stifles in his pillows when he can't fucking take it anymore.

“Fine,” Pidge says. “Well if you had been paying attention, you would know our contact is a shapeshifter.”

This piques Lance's interest, and his gaze flicks to Pidge, eyebrow raised. “Like Allura?”

“Even better,” Pidge says, “At least according to Coran. Full molecular manipulation, not just chameleon capabilities.”

Lance furrows his brow. “Then how are we supposed to find... them?”

Pidge holds up their phone, now augmented with various additions of Altean tech, turning the shape from a normal rectangle to some sort of boxy monstrosity. On it is a symbol: some sort of circle with smoke-like tendrils reaching out and in, tangling in the center. “This,” Pidge says. “Somewhere on their person, I suppose. Look for insignias on clothing, or maybe jewelry. Amulets and such.”

“Weapons, maybe,” Lance supplies. “Like Keith's knife.”

“Yeah, that too. Wherever it is, keep an eye out for it.”

“Right,” Lance says, and turns back to scan across the crowds. The mall is busy enough, but Lance thinks this pretty standard. There's families of aliens of all sorts scattered throughout the plaza, and Lance is suddenly painfully reminded that this peace is what they're fighting for. The whispers still follow him, scattered praises and reproaches in equal measure.

“How's your leg?” Pidge asks.

Lance winces. He tries not to, but he does. “It's... fine.”

“Any pain?”

“When did you become a doctor?” Lance quips, a breathless, humorless laugh ghosting past his lips.

“Since you started hiding your wounds and sneaking off in the middle of the night to heal up in the pods,” Pidge answers without hesitation.

Lance freezes, right in the middle of the walkway.

“Watch it!” snaps an alien as he pushes past, jostling Lance's shoulder harshly.

Lance struggles to pick his jaw off the ground.

The alien throws a sneer over their shoulder at him.

Pidge stops and turns, brow quirked upwards. “What?” they ask, sounding bored. “Did you really think you were being sneaky?”

“I—” Lance stammers out. “I—you...”

“Lance, please,” Pidge says. “You're in the way. You're quite welcome to continue having an internal crisis, but at least figure out how to simultaneously function externally.”

Lance manages a single step forward—his bad leg. He feels the twinge of material where it molds itself to his skin, where bone and metal converge. It responds as if a normal limb, but it's different, it's _different_ , _he's different_.

Pidge lets out a soft noise, somewhere between a sigh and sympathy.

Something flashes in the corner of Lance's eye.

Pidge takes him by the hand, surprisingly patient. “Come on,” they say, quiet. “We have a contact to meet.”

Lance takes another step with Pidge's guidance, and then, over his shoulder:

Cold, sharp, a voice like a shattered mirror—a thousand pieces, distorting one image.

“You seem lost.”

“What was that?” Pidge hisses, and Lance whips around.

The whispers, ghosts, following, watching, reaching.

“You're looking for me, are you not?”

It's a higher pitch, now, grating on Lance's ears, and he lifts his free hand to press against his temple.

“Show yourself,” he grits out.

“You've seen me, I'm sure.”

“We were sent by Coran,” Pidge says, voice low. “We're not here to fight, only to trade.”

The other visitors to the mall walk on, ignorant.

The whispers...

_“Are those the Voltron paladins? Didn't they cause the destruction of Tren a few quintants ago?”_

_“I've heard that the red one is related to Zarkon. All rumor, though.”_

_“That's Green? Small thing. Wonder how they manage.”_

_“Look at the blue one. Flawless. What I wouldn't do to get my hands on him... He'd be such a pretty slave.”_

Pidge turns, back pressing close to Lance, and their fingers tighten around his.

“I know what you've come for.”

“Then you know we mean no harm,” Lance says. His voice is scratchy.

“Perhaps.”

Someone brushes past Pidge, turning to give them an odd look through four sets of eyes before continuing on.

“What do you want?” Pidge asks.

A laugh, tinkling bells and the grate of metal on metal clashing together.

“Find me. Though maybe you need further motivation.”

“What?” Pidge says, voice dipping into something dangerous.

Lance squeezes their hand. “What the fuck,” he whispers.

Another shopper drifts by, ghosting past Lance's arm.

Lance turns, instinctively, and instead of the scenery of the space mall, he's face-to-face with a set of beady eyes. At their center: a glowing insignia. Familiar. Terrifying.

A scream catches in his throat, and all goes dark.

 

Lance hears breathing, harsh and gasping. It might be his.

“Pidge,” he croaks out. “Pidge, are you there?”

He's crouched, knees planted on the floor, and there's something taut around his arms, held behind his back. He's bound, and he can't see a single fucking thing.

He feels his heart beat rapidly against his ribs, and tries very hard not to give into the panic.

He fails.

Drawing in huge gulps of air, Lance struggles against his binds.

“You really are pretty,” says a whisper at Lance's shoulder.

Lance jolts, startling away from nothing.

"It would be a shame to have to do something horrible to you," the voice continues, further away this time.

Futilely, Lance struggles against the binds on his arms.

"Don't worry, your friend should get to you in time."

"What do you want?" Lance chokes out.

"Only for you to prove yourselves. Quiet, now, or I'll have to do something about that."

Lance slams his jaw shut. He has visions of whatever creature this is brandishing a knife and cutting his tongue out from between his teeth flashing behind his eyes. He almost screams when he bites down on his cheek and the pain makes those scenes nearly too real to face.

Barely, he manages to tamper down the whimper in his throat. The taste of copper doesn't help sooth his panicked brain.

 _Okay,_ he tells himself. _Okay, you can get out. You're a paladin. Prove it._

Lance takes a single deep breath. It's loud in comparison to the surrounding silence in the voice's absence. There's sweat on the back of his neck.

Lance remembers, once, playing hide-and-seek with his siblings long ago. He'd hidden in the closet, squeezed himself between empty suitcases and piles of junk stuffed out of sight. Even in the darkness, the press of coats on his shoulders had been a comfort, for a moment. But it only took a minute before the darkness did something to him: wormed into his mind and poisoned it, turned the weigh of suitcases and hand-me-downs into something crushing.

Lance had run out of the closet with a scream. He was one of the first found.

But he's not a kid anymore.

With another slow breath, Lance curls his toes to fit underneath him, gathering his weight back until he can press onto the balls of his feet. He's still in his armor, at least, because he can feel his shin guard poking into the back of his thigh.

Crouching, Lance leans forward and brushes his temple against his knees, trying to dislodge whatever is covering his face, but it doesn't help. Either it's stuck to him, or there actually isn't anything covering his eyes after all...

Lance fights down the scream rising from his chest. Instead, he shifts back and lifts himself up. Standing while unable to see disorients him, and a dizzy spell hits him.

"Going somewhere?" the voice says, from somewhere behind Lance.

Lance starts, caught.

"Let me go," he says. He tries to make it sound like a demand. It doesn't really come out that way.

"What's the fun in that? Don't worry, no one's going to hurt you here."

"Comforting statements," Lance retorts, "Given that I'm bound and blind."

"Isn't that the best place to be?" There's a light tone to the words, teasing. Lance scowls. He knows when he's being made fun of.

"I'm a paladin of Voltron. The others will come for me."

"Oh absolutely. That's quite the point."

"Then what's the point? Just let me go and no one gets hurt."

There's a chuckle, the same kind Lance's mom would use when Lance or one of his siblings did something especially incredulous.

"I have no intent to hurt you. I'm a... Perhaps you'd call me a procurer of unique artifacts. But I must ensure that my clients are sufficiently prepared to take these goods off my hands. The Green one was quite keen to do anything to get you back."

A completely different type of fear spikes down Lance's spine. "What did you do to Pidge?"

"Just testing their skills. I'm particularly impressed with their strategy."

"Don't hurt them!"

"And what would you do about it?" There's that chuckle again. It's patronizing to its core. "I don't see you in any position to be making demands."

Lance's slowly regaining confident falters.

"Just sit back and relax," the voice encourages. "Your friend will come and then you'll get your eyes back."

"My what—what?"

"I took your eyes," the voice says, as if explaining to a child. "You'll get them back. But I didn't want you finding a way out. I'd rather not get hurt from this affair should you decide to envision me as the enemy."

Lance's lungs constrict with horror. Now that he's hyperfocused on it, his vision isn't just dark, it's nothing. There's _nothing_. He can't feel himself blinking, either.

There's a crash, the sound of metal on metal, somewhere to Lance's right. He jerks away from it, and nearly stumbles in his fear.

“There you—” the voice starts.

“ _Fuck you_.”

“Pidge?” Lance squeaks. “Pidge, oh, thank God.”

“W-wait,” the voice pleads. It actually sounds scared. Lance feels a sliver of satisfaction.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you,” Pidge snarls.

“He has my—” Lance hears Pidge gasp in the middle of his sentence. “...eyes.”

“You want me to give them back? I will.”

Pidge lets out a growling noise. “Maybe I'll just carve them out and get them back myself.”

“...I think you'd prefer if I did it,” the voices says quietly.

There's some shuffling noises. A breeze passes over Lance's face.

Before him: the burning effigy of a long-dead deity; a Balmeran crystal, shattered; a black heart, beating—no, thundering, and then silence.

Lance blinks, and finds himself facing the vole-like creature he'd noticed in passing. Pidge has their bayard pressed against it's neck. They grab the creature roughly by its sloping shoulders and turn it to face them. Despite the fact Pidge is shorter, the force of their glare is intimidating enough to make the height difference not matter.

“Here's a lesson for you,” Pidge growls, vehement. “You don't fuck with Voltron, but more importantly, _you don't fuck with my friends_. Got it?”

The creature nods, visibly shaken.

“Now where's the shit you promised us?”

“Over there,” the thing says, gesturing with its snout.

“Lance,” Pidge says.

“Hands are tied.” Lance turns and lifts his arms off his back. Pidge slices their bayard through the binds. Lance doesn't flinch. He's learned that flinching results in more harm than staying still.

As soon as his arms are free, he shakes them out for a moment before going to the large bags in the corner of the room. Lance hoists them onto his shoulders.

Pidge leads the way towards the door.

“Ah—p-payment?” says the creature.

Pidge freezes, and then whirls. “I passed your test,” they say coldly. “Something tells me that's never happened before otherwise you'd be more prepared for attackers. I think that says more than enough that we earned this. Pleasure doing business.”

“Wait—ah—” the creature tries again, but Pidge ignores it.

Stalking out, Pidge lets out an annoyed sigh.

“What happened with you?” Lance asks.

“I don't want to talk about it,” Pidge grumbles. “Let's just fucking go.”

Lance shudders, looking over his shoulder. “Good plan. Thanks, by the way.”

“Don't mention it,” Pidge says. “Seriously. You don't talk about this, I won't tell about the midnight healing pod trips.”

Lance wonders what it was Pidge did that made them want to keep this quiet, but he's not about to press. “Deal.”

 

 

**??? Days Before**

Moonlight bounces back from the ocean's surface, winking and tweaked where the waves marble the light into something new.

Lance looks out across the beach, memories sinking in, weighing.

“Hey, Kiddo.”

Lance feels his heart lift. Turning, he finds his older sister walking up to him. Lance's face splits into a grin. “Cat!”

She smiles back, long hair lifted by the ocean breeze. She's older than when he last saw her, and more beautiful, as if that had been possible. She holds open her arms and Lance runs the short distance to her, boots kicking up sand.

Caterina hugs him tight, even though that really just makes his chestplate dig into his collar bone. Lance doesn't care. He missed her, dammit.

“How're you doing, Lance?” she asks. She rests her cheek on his temple. Even after all this time, she's taller than him. Maybe taller than Allura. It's completely unfair. “Where were you?”

Lance pulls back. He drops all pretenses of confidence and charm and instead rubs the back of the neck. “Well... I found a giant robot lion and now I'm trying to save the universe?”

Caterina laughs, a quiet, incredulous sound. “Don't tell mom that. She'll have a stroke.”

Lance breathes out a noise that some might call a pained chuckle. “Yeah, I know...”

“So where have you really been?” Caterina asks. “Promise I won't tell mom.”

Lance winces. “I wasn't joking.”

“Lance, really. You've been missing for months now. We're not mad. We're just glad to have you back. But you have to tell us what happened.”

Lance sighs. He lets his eyes fall closed, and tries to hold back tears. She doesn't believe him. She doesn't believe him.

It hurts more than he thought it would. And none of the others are here to back him up because...

Because...

Lance swallows. He hears a faint hum from somewhere behind him, but he refuses to open his eyes. “I swear I'm not lying. Hunk and Pidge were there too, and Keith... and Shiro. Takashi Shirogane, the famous pilot that went missing? We were all in space on this flying Castle-ship thing and we all have giant robot lions and we fight this evil empire.”

The hum grows louder, pops, and then goes silent.

“We _were_ all in space,” Lance continues, squeezing his eyes shut. “B-but I left. I left. I shouldn't have but I missed you all so much so I came back, and now... N-now...”

Something whizzes past Lance's ear.

Now, look what it's gotten him.

Lance slowly opening his eyes. Every time, he thinks he's ready for the horror of seeing Caterina's terrified, gaping expression. Every time, he thinks he can bear to see the hole that's been shot straight through her chest. He can see sand through it. The laser cauterized the wound as it killed.

Balance tipping as her muscles fail, Caterina falls towards him. Caterina, beautiful, amazing, his sister, falls into Lance's arms.

Dead.

Hoisting Caterina up, Lance slowly lets her body drop to the ground. He chokes on a sob. Already, she's cold, fingers gripping on his upper arms as he pries them off.

Looking down the beach, Caterina isn't the only one.

There's Jonathon, the youngest of the family. Isabella, Lance's younger sister. Aaron, the eldest brother. Cousins, aunts, uncles, childhood friends. His first girlfriend from the Garrison, mouth twisted into a scream. His mom, arm outreached for the stars as if she might be able to pull Lance back with the force of her longing.

If only.

Lance fights back bile in his throat. His stomach churns, and he ends up turning to vomit into the water. The waves wash it away, but they don't wash away the sight of his family, dead. Decimated.

They don't wash away the sight of the Galra fleet, looming in the starless sky.

Moonlight bounces back from the ocean's surface, blinking and twisted where the waves distort the light into something horrifying.

 

**587 Days Before**

“Hey, Buddy,” Hunk greets from where he's settled in the corner of the couch so he can prop his feet up on the adjacent seat.

Lance yawns, and in the process, images flash behind his closed eyelids, remnants of a former nightmare.

Or is it the one he's living?

His family: their faces bruised and bloodied. Lifeless, betrayed gazes all looking at him.

“Couldn't sleep?” Hunk asks, and pats the cushion next to him.

Lance nods, feeling his shoulders slump as he leans up against Hunk.

“Nightmare?”

“Yeah.” Lance tries, very, very hard not to let his eyes close. He stares at a speck on the ground.

“Your leg?” Hunk asks carefully.

Lance's brow furrows out of instinct more than anything else. “Not really, no. I'm probably supposed to have trauma about that, right?”

“Shiro still has nightmares,” Hunks cites as evidence. “But Shiro also went through... a lot.”

“Yeah,” Lance says. He looks down at his leg, and picks at his pajama pants leg until his ankle is visible. It looks normal. Really, it feels normal, too.

He can't tell the difference. He doesn't know if that's because of the trauma or because the Valisi are that good at what they do.

“Wanna talk about it?” Hunk offers.

Lance stares at the ceiling, blinking to keep his eyes from falling closed from exhaustion. “Same old shit,” he admits. “Family. Earth. The Galra. Nothing new. Worst part about it is I can't reason my way out. And it's all on my shoulders. God, I'd have so much more faith in the universe if Blue chose my older sister. She's such a badass, and I'm... Well. Me.”

Hunk lets out a long breath. “I know how it is,” he says, and then perks up. “I have an idea.”

“Throw ourselves out the airlock?”

Hunk moves so that Lance is no longer leaning on him, and Lance flops backwards onto the couch. Instead of the ceiling lights, he finds himself staring up at Hunk's face.

“It's not that drastic yet,” Hunk tells him, arms crossed over his broad chest. “I asked Allura a while back about sleeping pills. I know how to get them, still.”

Lance bolts up, and the only thing that saves them from slamming their foreheads together is that fact that Hunk has lived with Lance and expected it. “Let's go.”

 

“Huh.” Hunk boots up the healing pod interface. “This thing's been used recently.”

Lance nearly chokes on his own spit, but he manages to swallow around the sudden lump in his throat. “W-weird,” he croaks out.

Hunk turns to look at him, eyebrow raised. “No jab about the Castle being haunted?”

Lance shrugs, shifting his gaze away from Hunk. “It wasn't actually haunted,” he says, even though a shiver still works its way down his spine.

Hunk makes a noncommittal noise and goes back to the medical system. “Come here,” he says, after a moment. “I'll show you how to get more.”

“Thanks, Buddy.” Lance dutifully presses himself to Hunk's shoulder. He memorizes the windows and options Hunk goes through in order to get the machine to manufacture the pills.

A few moments later, after a muted laser noise, Lance has a bottle in his hands that might just save his life.

He can't read any of the label, but that doesn't matter. Just as long as they fucking work...

“Tell me how it goes,” Hunk says.

“Yeah, no problem.” Lance stuffs the bottle in a pocket in his robe.

“I tried to use them once before,” Hunk explains. “But the pills are kinda big, and you know my gag reflex.”

“Too well,” Lance jokes, but it comes out weak. He swallows, too loud. “Anyway. Thanks, Hunk. I owe you.”

Hunk shrugs, but his gaze lights up with recognition. Like Lance, Hunk eats up praise. Unlike Lance, he doesn't flaunt his desire for it. Unlike Lance, he actually has something worth praising: an analytical mind like no other and a heart of gold.

“Take care of yourself, Lance. Sweet dreams.”

Yeah.

Here's to sweet dreams.

 

 

**466 Days Before**

The beast goes down after a hard fight, flames lighting up the sky, fire heating the armor of Voltron near to the yield point, great gnawing jaws tearing at metal and soul.

The burning carcass of the magma worm's body lay smoking on the scorched earth. Lance stalks up to it, appropriately fuming, and kicks the gaping jaw with the heel of his boot, armor colliding hard with the skeletal anatomy.

“Lance, come on,” Hunk pleads over the comms., himself still breathless from the fight. “It's over. Let's go.”

Lance grunts out a reply, shoving his boot against the creature's maw. The Galra, he understands. He accepts that there will always be war and battle and death.

But when that death is innocent, or a least ignorant, something in him snaps.

“Damn you,” he whispers to the beast, feeling tears well in his eyes.

If it hadn't attacked them. If it hadn't fought. It it hadn't been so damn stubborn.

It didn't need to die.

Lance places his palm down against the muzzle of the beast. It's nearly unbearably hot, even through the temperature-regulation guards of his armor. It burns. He doesn't care.

His gaze trails from where he's touching the body to the hole blasted through the side of its head, just under the eye. Lance's shoulders bow under the weight of another life taken.

A precise shot, uncanny in his aiming.

He hadn't aimed for the eye itself, blazing fire now reduced to embers. No, something told him not to. Maybe it was Blue. He had hoped, _hoped_ , that by preserving the eye, he might merely scare the creature off rather than kill it. Seems he's simply too good at being a soldier.

Lance tilts his head up to look the dying embers in the... eye? There are teardrops splattered against his visor, mourning for the creature who didn't know any better than to attack.

“I'm sorry,” he tells it, even though it's not enough.

There's a tug of something in his heart, something coiled and burning. Lance lets out a slow breath, saying goodbye. To the beast, and to himself—he's never the same, each time.

“Let's go, Lance,” Hunk says over the comms. “Please. This thing's body is freaking me out.”

“Why?” Lance asks, turning to look along the worm's body, curled and twisted along the ground.

“I don't know, Man! Bad vibes,” Hunk says, sounding freaked-out, as usual. “It doesn't feel dead.”

Hope sparks in Lance's chest. “Alright, Buddy,” he says, keeping the kindled feeling trapped in his heart. “Yeah, let's get going.”

He takes one look back at the beast's eye, safe, intact. The embers flare up: a thank you, perhaps.

Lance smiles. “You can do it,” he whispers to the worm. “Maybe you learned your lesson about attacking giant Castle ships, though. I hope you did.”

Lance turns, and walks back to where Blue is waiting for him. Yellow sits behind her, tail flicking impatiently in an echo of Hunk's concern.

“You good?” Hunk's voice floats over the comms. as Lance settles in Blue's cockpit.

“I'm fine,” Lance says.

Blue purrs in his mind, a happy reunion.

“Hey, Beautiful,” Lance tells her.

“I'm flattered,” Hunk replies.

Lance snorts. “While not untrue, I wasn't talking to you.”

Hunk's laughter is robust, as it always is.

Lance joins in, but his is weighted with something new.

He's never the same, each time.

The stars loom in the distance, a backdrop to the Castle ship, waiting.

Cold, cold, light.

Cold.

Lance shivers under his armor as the lions land. “Christ,” he murmurs, “Blue, are you messing with me?”

Blue's purr is questioning.

“Is your freeze cannon broken again?” Lance asks her, tapping through Blue's interface to run a diagnostics. “No... Huh.”

“Something wrong with Blue?” Hunk asks.

“I don't think so... But it's super cold in here.”

“Maybe you're getting sick,” Hunk suggests.

Lance snorts and makes his way out of Blue. “I never get sick.”

The hangar is just as freezing, and gooseflesh prickles against the skintight fabric of his undersuit.

“That's a lie and you know it,” Hunk says. “Okay, I'm heading to the kitchen. Want me to try and make you some soup?”

“I'm good,” Lance tells him, and reaches up to pull off his helmet. It's smooth under his fingertips, which is weird... Because his undersuit goes over his hands, too, and he shouldn't be able to feel things...

The helmet clatters to the hangar floor as Lance stares at his hand—the one he'd touched the creature with, he registers hazily. His palm is red, burned, and seared into his skin is a marking. A dot within a circle, and crude flames flickering off the shape.

A blazing eye, Lance realizes.

“Oh god,” Lance wheezes out, head spinning.

His ears ring, and his palm burns. He's not sure if that's because he's finally realized what's happened or because it actually is burning.

 _Hungry_ , something in him says.

Lance catches himself on the hangar wall to keep from falling to the ground. Nonconsensual fire worm tattoos he might be able to cope with, but speaking ghost fire worms? Nope.

Lance closes his eyes, leaning his forehead against the wall. He's suddenly sweating in his armor, stark contrast to moments before, and the metal is cool against his brow, taking off the edge of heat.

 _Hungry_ , the thing repeats.

“I'm not going to feed you, whatever you want,” Lance tells it, bracing himself for some sort of fight. Whatever it is that's imprinted on him, he's not going to bow to its will. He saw what the magma worm was like—bloodthirsty and fierce and unyielding—and he refuses to turn into something so vicious.

He will not become a monster.

And then his stomach growls. Suddenly the offering of soup from Hunk sounds much more appealing.

 _Hungry_ , the things reminds him.

“No,” Lance says, even though his stomach growls again. He stalks from the hangar, distinctly avoiding the kitchen.

In his room, he sheds his outer armor, takes one—no, wait, two—of his sleeping pills, and goes to bed.

He doesn't dream. His is sleep is silent. There's a comforting warmth blanketing over his skin.

 


	2. with everything

**452 Days Before**

“Lance, are you in position?” Shiro's voice flits over the comms with an air of serious senority.

“Yeah, I'm set here.”

Currently, Lance is settled in the crook of a tree, purple leaves brushing the top of his helmet and some sort of fauna, probably a bird, making chirping noises above his head. His rifle is laid out across his lap, fingers settled on the trigger even though he's not aiming. Nothing to aim for yet. He's staked out on the assumption that the general of this particular Galra outpost might attempt to flee, given the Blades' information they'd gathered on him.

And the locals are paying a pretty price for his head. Not that Allura let any of them take the money.

 _Focus_.

Lance scowls. _Maybe I would if you'd shut up, Casper_.

Casper. Like the friendly ghost. That's what Lance has named the voice in his head.

It's been two weeks since the incident with the fire worm. Since, Lance has had another occupant in his head, though he seems to be increasingly unconcerned about this fact. The voice, though appropriately terrifying at times, is actually not inherently vicious, as Lance had first assumed. Rather, it seems to be connected to him and his needs.

The burn on his hand has faded to something barely visible.

Who knows? Maybe Lance is just going crazy. Maybe there isn't really a voice in his besides his own. He'd gone to the healing pod that first night, but nothing changed. This time, he pod didn't even bother with the _Foreign Contaminant Found_ warning. It just beeped cheerfully at him and sent him on his way with a _No Injury Found_.

Maybe Lance really is just losing his mind.

 _Focus_. _Mission_. _Kill_.

Then again, his thoughts are usually a lot more cohesive and integrated that these single-word meanings searing into his chest with renewed vigor.

How long before they stop aligning with his desires?

“Shut up, Casper,” Lance whispers.

“ _Lance,_ ” Shiro hisses over the comms.

“What?” Lance snaps, vaguely irritated, though he's not fully sure who it's directed towards.

“Did you hear what I said?”

Guilt spikes through Lance. “Sorry, no.”

“I said: we're going in. Expect about a two-minute delay if someone runs. Keep an eye to the west, too. Pidge is stationed in the satellite base there, and if the Galra run towards them, they'll be overrun. Make sure that doesn't happen.”

“Got it,” Lance says.

Something hops down onto the end of Lance's branch. Lance squints at it. It's vaguely birdlike, but without a beak. Perhaps it's more like some sort of flying squirrel, then.

It pins Lance with its beady eyes, and he has flashbacks to their most recent swap moon stop. Shuddering, Lance prods his rifle forward, trying to discourage the bird-squirrel from staying.

It cocks its head at him, as birds do. And then it proceeds to scream.

The noise chills Lance to his bones, and though it's really more of a squawk, Lance has never until now truly understood the meaning behind _blood-curdling scream_.

 _Bad. Bad. Bad._ Casper echoes Lance's sentiment back at him, reinforcing it tenfold.

“Shoo,” Lance tells the creature. He pokes at it with his gun, this time actually making contact.

The bird-thing screams again, and claws at the barrel of Lance's rifle. Lance realizes that it is indeed more like a squirrel, some sort of webbing spanning between its body at the slightly thicker cords that probably are its arms. The ends of its limbs curve into talons, with no apparent distinction between skin and nail.

Lance shudders again.

 _Bad. Bad. Hate. Hurt. Kill_.

“I agree with you there, Cas,” Lance mutters. He pushes his leg forward, careful not to upset his balance on his branch, and toes close enough for the creature to turn its beady, calculating gaze to Lance's boot.

For a heartbeat, they're frozen, judging, sizing each other up.

 _Hate,_ Casper reminds him. _Kill._

Lance kicks forward, simultaneously making the tree branch bounce. The bird screams and attacks his leg. It aims at his shin, claws scraping against Lance's armor like metal on a chalkboard. Lance grits his teeth against the _shhhhhhhrrrrrrk_ and kicks out again.

Unfortunately, the thing has a grip on the edge of his shin guard, somehow. It rides his leg even as he drops it over the side of the tree branch and tries to shake it off. That only encourages it to claw its way up Lance's leg and practically into Lance's lap.

“They're headed your way!” the comms warn.

Lance screams and flails wildly. Before he can turn his bayard around to shoot it, it's too close, talons tearing at the unprotected suit at Lance's hip. The sound of ripping fabric makes Lance panic, and before he even fully realizes what he's doing, he's morphed his bayard into some sort of knife and plunged it deep into the creature's neck.

It screams, once, and then the sound gurgles into silence.

Heart beating fast, Lance shifts his bayard back into his rifle, turns, fires.

The Galran general drops to the ground.

 

Later, the others fuss over his ripped suit and wounds. He hadn't even realized the thing had clawed him... or maybe bit him. That looks a bit like teeth marks.

“What the hell happened?” Pidge stares at him, partially incredulous.

“Local fauna,” Lance deadpans.

“Why'd it attack you?” Shiro inquires.

Lance shrugs. There's pain at his hip now, a dull, slow throb, matched to the gentle beat of his heart. “Dunno. Killed it, though. Turned my bayard into a knife. Didn't know I could do that.”

Keith raises an eyebrow in suspicion. “Seriously? A knife?”

“You _killed_ it?” Hunk echoes, sounding distressed. Hunk sounds distressed pretty often, though. “But I thought you—”

Lance's legs promptly give out at him. He finds himself staring up at the concerned faces of his teammates but unable to respond. Unable to wave it off and say _I'm fine_.

Even the voice in his head has gone silent. Maybe Casper is taking a nap too...

 

Lance wakes stumbling out of a healing pod, brain foggy and limbs heavy. Hunk catches him, only barely.

“Feeling better?” Hunk asks. “We think that thing you faced off with was toxic.”

“I feel like I've been hit by a truck,” Lance says.

“Let's get you to bed.” Hunk hoists more of Lance's weight onto his shoulders, practically carrying him. Together, they struggle towards Lance's bedroom.

Lance wonders how many times he's walked this same path. Wonders how many times are left before he finally gets it right.

 _Sleep_. _Tired. Tired_.

_Yeah, yeah, Cas. Sleep, soon._

“What was that?” Hunk asks.

Lance must have been muttering to himself instead of just thinking. “Nothing,” he mumbles out, and yawns. “Jus' tired.”

In his room, Lance starts carefully peeling himself out of the healing pod suit. Hunk starts the zipper on the back for him until Lance can reach it better and then heads for the door.

“You sure you're gonna be okay?”

“I'm fine,” Lance tells him. “If I pass out again, it'll be on the bed.”

Hunk chuckles, just barely, and his tone is dry. “Okay. Holler if you need anything.”

Lance gives him a bleary thumbs-up, and then goes back to undressing, yawning again as he tugs the skin-tight suit off his legs.

He starts towards the closet to grab his robe, only to freeze in front of the body mirror he has on the door. Starting at his left hip, his veins stand out in dark purple contrast to his skin. Impossibly violet, like a three-day old bruise, his body is stained by color. There are a few fingers of purple reaching across his chest, towards his heart.

Lance wonders if he'd be standing here right now if they'd managed to get there. Swallowing, Lance runs his gaze over the new marks. He wonders if they're permanent.

 _Sleep_ , Casper insists.

Blinking, Lance decides he absolutely does not give a single shit about his veins. The thing is dead, anyway. It already paid the price.

Lance grabs a pair of boxers, decides to forego his robe, and falls into bed. He's asleep, dreamless, instantly.

 

 

**373 Days Before**

“Let's hope this goes better than the Vasili celebration,” Pidge mutters.

Lance glances sideways at them. “You're telling _me_.”

“Sorry,” Pidge says, sounding at least a little bit genuine. The apathy isn't from a disconnect between them, he knows, but rather because Pidge already expects Lance to forgive them. And they wouldn't be wrong, so there's no sense in being annoyed about it.

Besides, even if Lance is a bit apprehensive about another luxury alliance ceremony, parties are still one of Lance's favorite things. And as Hunk makes so blatantly clear when he rushes for the buffet table the second they're all in the room, the food is always a major upgrade compared to food goo. Lance's mouth is already watering.

 _Hungry! Good!_ Cas chitters in his mind.

The Dessen—a race of humanoid-eqsue bodies, each wearing a mask adhered to their face—high priest approaches the group, right before Hunk can bolt off towards the food.

“Welcome,” he drawls, and his voice is only slightly muffled by his mask. It depicts a rhino, horns jutting into the air above his head, though a lock of dark hair has slipped to the front, visible against the grey shading of the rhino. “We have provided our saviors with the greatest hospitality.”

Without a visible mouth, it seems as if the high priest's voice comes from all directions at once. Lance might have equated it to being spoken directly to his mind at one point, but he's now familiar with that experience and knows this is nothing like it.

“Thank you,” Allura replies sweetly. “We appreciate the effort.”

“You've come at a good time,” the high priest adds. He never turns his head to glance at any of them, instead staring straight forward. The eyes of the mask are two hollow sockets, made of shadow. “We were due for our annual carrion festival. Liberation from the Galra has not only allowed us to honor you, but also pay proper tribute in full for the first time in years.”

Pidge's eyes narrow. “Tribute?”

Hunk swallows hard. “Carrion?”

“It's probably a translation error,” Shiro assures them.

“You are, of course, welcome to join in the feast,” says the high priest.

“It's not like... dead things, right?” Hunk asks carefully.

The rhino mask tilts to the side, as if thoughtful, though it doesn't turn to face Hunk. “Well, we had prepared some local sacrificial fauna for the meal, but if that's not to your taste, we have some other delicacies.”

“I'm sure it's fine, Hunk,” Shiro insists.

“It's local fauna,” Pidge adds. “It'd be like eating a rabbit or something on Earth.”

“Okay, I suppose...” Hunk concedes, albeit grudgingly.

“All is well, yes?” the high priest says. Another Dessen passes behind him carrying a tray, and he stops them before they slip into the crowd. “Char, some drinks, perhaps, for our honored guests?”

Char pauses, turning towards them. Their mask is decorated with the feathers of some tropical bird, all colors and slim features. A small beak pokes out from the center of the mask, and there's a metal chain pierced through the beak and looping to connect to another piercing on their ear. Their hair, a dark sort of navy in color, is pulled back into a bun, decorated with a silver comb to hold it in place.

Lance decides, despite how odd the race are, that Char is beautiful.

 _Want...?_ Casper echoes in Lance's mind. Cas, who, up until this point, had been a mirror of Lance's desires. Except that Lance's desires when it comes to people have always been less clear.

 _No_ , Lance tells Cas. _No, don't want._

 _Want!_ Cas presses.

 _No!_ Lance fights back. _I'm in charge here. And I might be a flirt, but I don't want sex, so stop it_.

Cas struggles against Lance a moment more, and then slowly settles into compliance. He's never managed to take over before, so Lance isn't sure if he can. Not that Lance particularly wants to find out. He can't really foresee any major conflicts with Cas, though, so he's not too worried, even if Cas works significantly more on base instinct.

“Is everything alright?” A light voice draws Lance's focus back to his surroundings.

A soft echo of _want_ from Casper peters out as Lance finds himself face-to-face... er, face-to-mask with Char. He realizes he's breathing hard, strain from fighting with Cas and fear at being usurped by his uninvited mind roomie.

“Fine,” he says, a little breathily.

Allura rolls her eyes at him, accustomed to Lance's flirting and assuming his reaction is due to feeling flustered. Pidge raises a questioning eyebrow, fully aware at this point in their friendship that Lance is ace as fuck and never actually gets aroused when people flirt back.

Char holds out a glass of something to him. The shape of the glass feels weird—thinner than a wine glass but bigger than a champagne flute. Gingerly, Lance takes it from them. The liquid inside is a dark color, and it takes Lance a moment to recognize the tint of red. Wine, maybe?

“This refreshment,” the high priest starts. “Is made from one of our most highly-requested products. The fruit is incredibly rare and grows only in a single room within this very palace.”

Lance meets the gazes of the other paladins. Shiro is already lifting the glass to his lips. Pidge shrugs and follows suit. Hunk looks conflicted for a moment, but after watching Shiro and Pidge dive in, he caves too. Keith sniffs at his glass, scowls, and then scrunches up his nose in distaste.

Is there something wrong with it? Lance brings his own glass to his nose. It smells sweet, like some sort of berry, maybe. Why did Keith not like it? Must have a thing against strawberries or something.

Keith hands his glass to Shiro, shaking his head.

“Don't like it?” Shiro asks softly.

“Smells like...” Keith trails off, looking warily at the Dessen present.

Lance turns away from the others and back to Char and the high priest. He takes a sip of his own and decides that whatever Keith hates about this stuff, he's distinctly _wrong_. The taste is amazing. Like berries and peaches and oranges, without any of the tang or bitterness but also without being _too_ sweet. It's an impressive balance. They need to pack some containers of this to take to the Castle.

“They say the fruit from which is juice is made each holds a different world,” Char says, voice too cheerful to _not_ be smiling behind their mask. “The sweetness comes from suffering.”

“...like blood,” Keith finishes.

Lance tries very, very hard not to spit the liquid in his mouth. It's still delicious, but tainted, now, by some poisonous association.

Hunk is not quite as skilled.

There's a spray of droplets across the group, and Hunk splutters out some panicked noises. They may or may not be attempts at words.

“You're... kidding, right?” Pidge asks.

Lance slowly lowers the glass from his lips. He plasters on a smile.

 _Want_ , Cas tells him. And yes, Lance wants. Yes, the drink is amazing. Yes, some part of him, even the part that isn't Casper, _wants_ , regardless of the blood flowing over his tongue and slipping down his throat as he'd drink.

Char tilts their head, the same _curious_ move that the high priest did a moment earlier. “It's what they say,” they purr.

“I-I don't know,” Hunk manages in a shaky voice. “I d-don't feel...”

“Allura, I think Hunk and I are going to head back to the Castle,” Shiro says.

Allura looks them over for a moment, and then glances at their masked companions. “Very well,” she says. “Be careful heading back.”

“I think I'll go with them,” Pidge says. “Humans have funny digestive systems. You know how it is.”

Allura nods, and turns to the high priest. “Forgive us for any disruption in your celebration. We have no intention of offending.”

“No offense is taken!” the high priest says, too kind. “I will leave the rest of your party to enjoy the festivities at their leisure. Feel free to come and go as you may please.”

“Thank you.”

Keith is suddenly at Lance's shoulder, making a face at Lance as he absently takes another sip from the glass in his hand. If he doesn't think, then he can forget the legend accompanying the taste of heaven.

“Really?” Keith grumbles.

Lance looks at him sideways. “It tastes good.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Keith huffs.

Lance juts his chin out, annoyed, and his gaze flicks to Allura. “Do you like it?”

Allura looks down at the glass in her hand for a moment. She swirls it with a soft flick of her wrist and purses her lips. “Shiro once told me about beer on earth. I believe it is similar. Unpleasant but... effective.”

“It gets you drunk?” Lance asks, a little incredulous. He wasn't exceptionally experienced in alcohol, having left a year before he could _legally_ drink, but he knew enough to say that whatever he was drinking now was very different from anything he'd tried back home.

Allura lets out a hum. “Not quite,” she says. “Perhaps more accurate would be to say it makes decisions not matter so much.”

“It makes the decisions to join the celebrations far easier,” Char pipes up.

Lance starts. He'd forgotten they were there, and then wonders why that is. Normally, if he finds someone he's interested in flirting with, he's more attuned to them than anything else. Maybe because of the masks. Char blends in with the rest of the crowd rather easily.

“Have you had some already?” Lance asks them.

“I've had a dose, yes,” Char says. “Before all of this, of course, otherwise I would have to go bare before you.”

“You mean your mask?” Lance asks.

“Mask?” Char repeats, tilting their head in that curious little move again. “I suppose you might call it that. Yes, mask will work.”

“Yours is pretty,” Lance comments, taking another sip.

It's at this point that Keith, who had been hovering near Lance, realizes where the conversation is going. Allura seems to recognize it, too, though there's a sort of hooded sadness in her gaze that seems to speak of stolen will. Keith goes to her side, instead of Lance, and scrunches up his nose again.

“You really can't smell the blood?” Keith asks.

Lance glances over at him. “Not at all. It's more like a smoothie.”

Keith shakes his head, displeased. “Rust and decay.”

Lance rolls his eyes and turns back to Char. “So what other traditions do you have for the, uh, carrion festival?”

Char's head turns to him, the first time any of them have been singled out. Lance only slightly preens under the distinction. “The feast, of course,” they say. “As well as more... private ceremonies.”

Lance can't tell what sort of expression Char has through the mask, but he picks up on the lilt of their voice. “Of course,” Lance replies smoothly. “I don't suppose just anyone can participate in these private ceremonies.”

Allura lets out a groan. Now that Char has looked away from her, she apparently deems it appropriate to slip away into the crowd. Keith looks warily at Lance for a moment before trailing after Allura.

Char's laughter is light, a fickle creature of hidden intentions. “Only select few participate in the revels with our lords.”

“And what of a paladin of Voltron?” Lance asks, leaning towards them almost subconsciously. “Might they be worthy enough?”

The mask tilts back, and Char's shoulders shake for a moment before a more robust laughter spills from behind the decorative feathers obscuring their features. “Perhaps one of the others. The ones who left. Their bodies would have been much better prepared to contain the feast. It's a prerequisite. I'm unsure if you'd be capable of it.”

Lance's chest spikes with indignation, and it makes it all the more satisfying when he lets a smirk tug at his lips. Confidence oozing from his posture, he casually takes another drink from his glass before he replies. “Try me. I think I'll surprise you.”

Char seems to be appraising him for a moment. Finally they reach for him, hand resting on his shoulder. They fingers rest over his undersuit where the armor doesn't cover. Even through the fabric, their touch is startling cold. “ _Come with me_.”

Lance raises an eyebrow, and nods. “Lead the way.”

Char gestures at his drink with their free hand. “You probably want to finish that first.”

Lance stares at them for a moment, and then tips his head back, berries and blood cascading down his throat and through his veins.

Char observes him, watching as he swallows down the drink. Satisfied, they pluck the glass from his hands and pass it off to someone in the crowd. At least Lance thinks that's what happened. Char's grip on him tightens slightly as they lead him through the throngs of masked. In the distance, among tigers and lizards and swans—or as close as one might get to those—Lance thinks he sees a flash of Allura's silver hair, but he's not completely sure.

They weave through the crowd. The air gets thicker the closer they get to their destination—the bodies, thicker, too. The cold ghost of limbs press into Lance from all sides. Char's fingers slide down his arm and take his hand, tugging him ever forward.

Suddenly the crowd disappears, and Lance finds himself standing at Char's shoulder. They—and the rest of the crowd—are looking at a long table, red tablecloth decorated with elegant lace and fitted with jewels. Smart, Lance realizes, to hide the bloodstains.

At the center of the table lay a bloated creature. It looks vaguely pig-like, with that coarse but sparse coat, but instead of hooves it has the clawed feet of big cat. Lance shivers. His left side aches, a distant call.

Casper whimpers in his mind, unsure.

A few bodies in plain masks bring out more platters to adorn the table: feathered crows with dead, staring gazes; small dog-like creatures with gaping, unhinging jaws and jagged teeth, insects crawling in their open mouths; some sort of fish, scales turning to dust when breathed upon too harshly. The scent of carrion, muted, fills Lance's nostrils. He breathes it in, berries and blood.

Suddenly someone from the gathered crowd breaks away. The high priest, pale grey horns on his rhino mask glinting in the light, leaps onto the table, accompanied by a round of cheers. He holds up his hands, asking for silence, and then reaches down. He pries one of the large creatures claws from its flesh. Blood trickles weakly from the new wound. Another cheer goes up as the high priest lifts his prize to the air with pride.

As the noise dies down, Char leans against Lance. He shudders, cold flashing through him, and Casper makes his displeasure known by angrily chirping in Lance's mind.

The high priest leans down once again. With swift, calculated motions, he places the creature's claw at its bloated stomach, hovers for a moment, and then digs the sharp tip into flesh.

Guts and maggots spill from the open cut. The high priest reaches in, ripping out intestines and parasites alike. Triumphant, he throws both the handful of rotting entrails and the torn claw into the crowd. The claw snags against Lance's cheek. Perhaps it draws blood. Lance ignores it.

The smell is horrid, and his body wants to hate it. Instead, his mouth waters.

And this, right now, is when Cas catches up. This is where Cas figures out what Lance wants.

Desire pulses through him—not for the beautiful person next to him, even as Char lifts their mask from their face, nor anyone else here. The feast calls him. The decayed flesh draws him in.

He loses Char in the sudden rush forward. He doesn't think he'd recognize her without the mask anyway. He can't pinpoint the facial features of anyone present, really. Everything blurs together with the heat of _want_ , the hunger. The aching, beautiful, terrifying hunger.

The first bite releases bile over his tongue. Lance had never before wondered what death tastes like, but now he knows: musky infection, the press of mold and virus against his gums, rubbery flesh torn between teeth, stale blood.

His head aches as Casper screams against the inside of his skull.

 _No, no, no, no._ Casper tries to draw him away. He realizes this is a mistake, even if Lance does not.

Blissfully enraptured, Lance feasts.

At some point, another glass of berry-blood-juice appears on the table near Lance. He snatches it, tipping his head back and gulping it down.

He's chasing the last swallow with his tongue when someone knocks the glass from his hand. It lands on the table, clattering against plants and ultimately landing on the body of a crow. Worms spill from its mouth when the weight settles on its chest. Lance looks mournfully after the glass.

“What the _fuck_ ,” a voice hisses in his ear.

“I was drinking that,” Lance retorts, turning to glare at Keith.

Keith's gaze is wide, staring at Lance. His hand is latched onto Lance's wrist, fingers digging into his pulse. “Were you _eating_ that shit?”

Lance rolls his eyes. Damn Keith. “Of course, it's past of the celebration. It's good.”

Keith looks at him like he's insane. “Lance, what the fuck.”

“Let me go,” Lance says. He tries to tug his hand back, but Keith's grip is a vice. “I wasn't done.”

“No,” Keith splutters out. His gaze turns harsh. “No, we're going. You're leaving. What the fuck.” Keith pulls at Lance's arm.

Lance leans his weight back, resisting.

Keith's body jerks when he doesn't get anywhere. He turns to look over his shoulder, incredulous. “Lance, come _on_. Holy shit.”

“Go find Allura or something,” Lance tells him. “I'm fine here.”

“Allura already went back to the Castle,” Keith growls. “I said I'd bring you back.”

“I'll go back on my own,” Lance insists.

“I'm not leaving without you,” Keith snaps.

“Yes, I think you will be.” The high priest looms behind Keith. At least, Lance presumes it's the high priest. The mask is gone. Dark hair spills over his forehead. A scar bites through his bottom lip. His eyes are grey, knowing. “The uninitiated are not welcome at the feast. I will have to ask even our honored guests to leave if they are unworthy.”

“He's coming with me,” Keith snarls at him. His hand reaches for his belt, but Lance tugs on his arm and throws Keith off balance before he can reach his knife. Keith whirls. “Lance! What the hell!”

“You can't attack Ven,” he informs Keith. The name comes to him, natural, ancient. “You'll interrupt the feast.”

Someone slings their arm over Lance's shoulders. “You stopped eating,” they say, and the voice is familiar.

“Char.” Lance breathes out familiarity. “Where'd you go?”

“You only ever get to the septapod tentacles if you get to them first,” Char explains. “I saved you one.”

Lance grins, though he doesn't turn to look at them. “You're awesome.”

Char laughs, that light, fae-touched sound. “I know. Come, the feast isn't over.”

“I'll be right there,” Lance answers. He his gaze on Keith. Slowly, he pries his wrist from Keith's grasp. “Go back,” he tells him.

Keith looks just a little bit stunned, and then the crowd pushes them both, and Keith disappears among the bodies.

 

Lance wakes up feeling refreshed. There must have been some sort of magical alcohol at the celebration the night before, because he doesn't remember anything but he also doesn't have a hangover.

He feels like he's walking on clouds—the first time he's been in such a good mood in a _long_ time—as he quickly gets dressed and heads for the dining room.

“Mornin' everyone,” Lance chirps as he saunters in.

Shiro and Pidge, the two dreaded night-owls-slash-insomiacs of the team, mutter greetings.

Hunk gives a wave and a, “Morning, Lance!”

Keith and Allura won't meet his gaze.

Lance peers at them. His memory flits back in hazy snapshots. Keith helping Lance back to the Castle, stumbling and drunken and covered in blood. Lance shakes his head. Must have been a dream.

“We have some bread...bread-like... stuff, from Des, if you want some, Lance,” Hunk informs him. “It's actually pretty good, though I might have added some herbs to it, y'know? Sometimes bland is good, but this needs _something_. Maybe some—”

“I'm good, actually,” Lance says. “Not really hungry.”

Hunk's brow furrows in concern. Keith looks up at Lance through his bangs, eyes narrowed into a glare. What the hell is his problem?

“Are you feeling okay?” Hunk asks.

“Fantastic, actually,” Lance answers, glancing sideways at Keith. “I'm just not hungry. Must have had too much to eat yesterday.”

At this, Allura abruptly rises from her spot at the dining table, the screech of the chair on the floor a harsh sound in the echoing room. She stalks briskly towards Lance, and catches his arm.

“You were foolish,” she hisses to his shoulder, still facing the opposite direction and refusing to look at Lance. “You're lucky to be alive.”

Lance's brow furrows. “What—” he starts, but Allura is already walking away.

“What was that?” Hunk asks.

Lance shrugs, looking over his shoulder at Allura's retreating figure. “Dunno.”

Keith clears his throat. When Lance looks at him, he's staring straight at Lance, gaze harsh. Keith pulls something from his pocket or pouch or whatever and slides it across the table to Lance.

A single claw, torn viciously from its host.

“I hope you're pleased with yourself,” Keith snarls, standing. He follows Allura out of the room, leaving Lance to stare in horror at the trinket on the table.

“Lance?” Hunk asks carefully. “You okay? You look like you're gonna be—”

Lance turns away from the table to vomit onto the floor.

“...sick,” Hunk finishes.

“What the hell?” Pidge grumbles. “Okay, I'm out. If Lance is sick I'm not catching it.”

“I'm...” Lance wheezes, coughing. “Fine.”

“You sure, Lance?” Shiro asks. He comes over and rubs a hand soothingly over Lance's shoulder.

Lance flinches away from the touch. “Fine,” he snaps. “I'm fine.”

Except he's not. He's sick. Definitely sick. Just not the way Pidge meant.

He's sick in the way Keith looks at him with blatant disgust. He's sick in the way Allura's gaze regards him with disdain. He's sick in the way that should make a person hate themselves.

Except, somewhere in his gut, though his stomach churns with revulsion, he doesn't regret it.

The rotting feast calls.

 

 

**280 Days Before**

Lance's heart pounds with a certain thrill—it's not instinctual, or at least, not according to _his_ instincts, but rather a learned, acquired beast thrumming in his veins. Is this how Keith feels, every time he rushes into battle? Is this how adrenaline surges through Pidge's body when they manage a technological breakthrough?

Is this what Shiro has come to know, so, so close, when his body bursts with power, hand glowing with fascinatingly deadly Galran tech?

But surely, nothing can compete with what Lance feels in his bones right now. Euphoria, almost.

He's drunk on it.

Another Galra drone goes down, a laser blast seared through its chest. Lance's chest fills with smug satisfaction. Behind him, Hunk is laying down supporting cover, and in front of him, Keith is flitting between targets, uncannily precise with his bayard.

There must have been a reason for this mission, Lance knows. And if he really tried, he might be able to dredge up the memory of the briefing well enough to remember why they're attacking this Galra compound. But that would take far too much effort and Lance is enjoying this too much.

It's just... satisfying. To see the limp, lifeless, weak-kneed bodies of his enemies as his team marches steadily forward.

So instead of thinking, he acts.

Ahead of him, Keith ducks under the reaching arm of a Galra solider. Lance sees his head pop up behind the enemy seconds before a clean slice across the Galra's neck leaves him laying limp on the ground. Lance's mouth waters.

Turning his attention to other targets, Lance fires off two shots, dispatching two drones.

Someone calls after him, and Lance turns at the sound of gunfire. Instinctively, he rolls away, ducking into an connecting hallway. A bullet digs into the floor where Lance was standing. It's then that the earlier words resolve themselves into meaning: “They have a sniper!”

Keith flings himself into the hallway, too, accompanied by the distinctive sound of a missed bullet. He's panting hard, hair sticking to his temples with sweat under his helmet. He looks up at Lance. If Lance had to guess, he looks weary.

Lance grins.

“What?” Keith growls, though the effect is lessened with his harsh breathing.

“This is where it gets fun,” Lance says.

“Is everyone good?” Shiro asks over the comms.

“Shaken,” Pidge answers. “Hunk got grazed. Nothing too bad.”

“Peachy,” Keith grumbles.

“Lance?” Shiro presses.

Lance glances around the corner of the wall. He takes a moment to assess where the enemy sniper is. There—bullet holes in the observation deck windows. A challenge, then. Lance ducks his head back in before the sniper has time to aim on him.

“I'm perfect.”

And then Lance runs out of cover.

Someone shouts after him. It might be Keith. It might be someone on the comms. He's not sure. Doesn't matter. He's raising his rifle, firing twice. If he doesn't hit, he's at least going to disrupt the sniper's focus.

The Galra soldiers are regrouping at the base of the observation deck tower at the center of the room. Lance runs towards them.

“Lance—what the fuck—shit.” Pidge is huffing expletives at him. Suddenly, Lance's feet are dragged out from under him, and he lets out a yelp.

Pidge's bayard drags him into the hallway with them and Hunk. Lance glares at them through his visor. “You're giving the sniper time to get their shit together,” Lance states. “Let me go.”

“You're gonna get yourself killed!” Pidge hisses at him.

Lance looks at them, incredulous.

He turns to Hunk to plead with him. “Buddy, come on. I can do this, but I need someone to distract the Galra who have _completely regrouped by now_.” Lance glares pointedly at Pidge for a moment.

“Hunk, no,” Pidge says. “You'll both get killed.”

“They'll be paying attention to me,” Lance says. “Hunk will be fine.”

“Lance, this isn't...” Hunk starts. He pauses with his mouth open, words seemingly lodged in his throat.

Isn't what?

Hunk lets out a sigh. “Can you really do this?”

“Hunk, no!” Pidge squawks.

“Of course I can,” Lance answers.

Hunk raises an eyebrow. “I'm serious Lance. No bravado.”

Lance's brow furrows. “I'm serious, too.”

“Lance, I don't want you going out there,” Shiro's voice interrupts.

Lance stares at Hunk. Eventually, finally, inevitably, Hunk nods.

The last thing Lance hears before the explosion is Pidge's gasp, and then he's thrown into the hallway from the blast.

Lance's head throbs; his ears ring. Blearily, he lifts his head from where he'd slammed it on the ground to find Pidge slowly picking themselves up off the ground nearby. Hunk is slumped against the far wall, struggling to lift his head.

“Fuck,” Lance wheezes out.

The Galra must have planted a bomb near where they'd been, because the wall Lance had been using for cover is now in ruins.

They're still safe from the sniper, having been thrown deeper into the hallway, but it's only a matter of time. Lance struggles to his knees, looking for his bayard... Which is no where in sight.

His fingers brush against something as he crawls across the ground—Pidge's bayard, now deactivated. Glancing over his shoulder at them, Lance decides they can manage without it for now. “Need this,” he tells them, lifting the weapon in his hand.

Pidge's brow furrows at him. They lips move. No sound comes out.

Lance peeks through the gaping hole made by the explosion. He nearly gets taken out by a Galra drone in the process of planting another explosive.

Growling, Lance shifts Pidge's bayard—it turns into some sort of curved scimitar in his hands—and decapitates the drone before it can set off the blast. He snags the explosives off the wall and tosses it towards the base of the observation deck. It lands a little short, as Lance shifts Pidge's bayard into a rifle and fires, but it's enough to make the Galra gaurds break rank.

Lance takes his chance. Vaulting over the wall, there's no teammates to get in his way this time. Lance rushes forward. He preemptively aims a shot at the observation deck, and frowns when he still can't hear his own gunfire, much less that of the enemy.

Regardless, he charges, shifts Pidge's bayard, and takes out one of the stumbling Galra, still stunned by the explosion, by launching himself onto him and plunging the blade into his chest. The next, he takes out with a small pistol, which is new, but Lance isn't questioning it. He fires two quick blasts into another Galra soldier.

Someone grabs at his shoulder—Lance half expects it to be Shiro, dragging him back—but it's a drone. By the time Lance takes it down, two more have latched onto him, and within heartbeats he's swarmed.

In the struggle, Pidge's bayard slips from his fingers, clattering to the floor. Lance kicks out, snarling, and manages to land a blow on the chin of an oncoming solider, only to once again be restrained by the sheer number of enemies on him.

The elevator doors up to the observation deck open, revealing what must be another of Haggar's creations. The Galra that steps out is missing one arm, replaced, like Shiro and Sendak, with a weapon. In contrast to the others, theirs is a rifle. It raises—aims squarely at Lance's chest.

“—n't kill them!” someone calls over the comms, moments before bullets spray through the crowd of Galra and drones around Lance.

Hunk, risking hitting Lance with his bullet spray, except that this is exactly what Lance needed.

Just enough of the Galra restraining him either are hit or turn away, and Lance lurches forward, ripping his limbs free. Claws dig into his skin, but the wounds are superficial.

His heart pounds, smug, satisfied, _alive_.

Lance barrels into the Galra monstrosity, charging into the elevator, and kicks out against the panel. His stomach lurches as they rise into the observation deck.

There's the click and whirl of mechanical parts in the air as the Galra general adjusts their sniper limb into something more suited for close range. Lance lunges at him. He's never been good at close combat, but he knows _enough_. He feels the bloodlust sing in his veins as he lands a blow against the Galra's jaw before they shove Lance off by thrusting their gun-arm between them.

Lance stumbles against the far wall. A pistol aims for his chest for a terrifying heartbeat, but then he's kicking out, throwing off the Galra's aim. Behind him, the elevator doors slide open, nonchalant.

Yellow eyes flick towards the opening. The Galra tries to charge forward, but Lance slams his shoulder into them. They both ram into the wall, hard, and they must have hit the panel because the elevator starts its descent again.

Stunned, the Galra general leans against the wall for a moment too long, and that's their fatal mistake. Lance tackles them down. Something whispers in his bones, in his chest, nestled between his ribs. A pleading beat.

Lance straddles the Galra's chest, using the press of his knees to pin their wrists to the ground. Instinctively, Lance's hands find their way to the Galra's neck, pressing down. Not enough, not enough.

The air goes cloying—the scent of death, looming.

The elevator doors open with a quiet, unassuming ding.

Lance shifts his hold, wraps his hand around the Galra's nape. It's almost a caress, if not for the fuel of anger boiling Lance's blood and—is that fear in those yellow eyes?

“Lance—no!” someone calls. Maybe Pidge. Probably Pidge. Sounds like Pidge.

With a sharp twist, Lance snaps the Galra's neck.

The crack resounds in his ears, settles heavily, satisfyingly over his muscles.

Lance falls to the side, panting. He stares up at the ceiling of the elevator.

“Lance, we needed them alive, you _knew_ that, why the— _holy shit_.”

“Did we?” Lance asks breathlessly. “Oops. I wasn't paying attention during the briefing.” Or was it he didn't think it was worth it to keep them alive? Maybe that was it. Maybe he had remembered.

“Uh, Lance...?”

“What's up, Pidgeon?”

“...Your eyes are glowing.”

Lance squints at the ceiling for a moment longer. He doesn't see anything wrong. Everything's normal, everything's...

Pidge appears on the edge of Lance's vision, leaning over him. He blinks back at his reflection in their visor.

“Um,” Lance says. His blood suddenly runs very distinctly cold. Something lodges in his throat, words or bile or something else—he's unsure. “W...What the f-fuck. I—what—no, I don't—”

Panic settles over his muscles.

“Maybe,” Pidge says cautiously, like they're talking to a wild animal. “We should get you in a healing pod or something.”

Lance blinks up at them, shell-shocked and unwilling to believe his own eyes.

Are they even his own?

 

Concern turns Shiro's face hard, tension lining his brow, as Lance steps from the healing pod. The others, minus Allura, who is busy flying the Castle, are anxiously gathered around. Keith is lurking near the entrance to the room. Hunk is fiddling with his hands, and Pidge has their head popped under Coran's elbow to look at the screen he's reading off of.

“Well,” Coran says quietly. “Good news is, you're perfectly fine. Technically.”

“Technically,” Lance echoes dubiously.

Shiro turns to look at Coran. “And the bad news?”

“Well, just let me see if I can find...” Coran trails off, rapidly flicking from screen to screen on the healing pod's interface.

“He's not human,” Pidge deadpans. They pull their head out from under Coran's arm to squint and Lance behind their glasses.

Lance blinks. “What?”

Shiro looks just a bit stunned. “Of course Lance is human.”

Pidge shrugs. Their gaze doesn't leave Lance, even as they reply to Shiro. “Not anymore, he isn't.”

“I'm right here!” Lance squawks. “What the hell! How? How can I _not_ be human? I look human, don't I?”

Hunk bites his lip. “Well...”

Lance points at him. “Shut it. Not helping.”

“Hunk has a point, Lance,” Shiro says quietly.

“This is crazy,” Lance insists. “How come Shiro's classified as human, then? His arm isn't human.”

Coran sighs, giving up on whatever it is he's doing with the screen. “The healing pods are designed to recognize species based upon similar phenotypes if it's a species it doesn't have enough genetic data compiled. It must deem Lance not... human enough in comparison to the rest of you.”

“Bullshit,” Lance spits. “Keith—”

“—Looks human,” Keith interrupts.

“Keith's genes really only affect his reflexes,” Pidge explains. “And I guess his ambidexterity, but that might just be a _Keith_ thing, not a _Galra_ thing.”

“It's more prevalent in Galra,” Coran supplies cheerfully.

“So then it's just because I look too different?” Lance hisses. “Then run a DNA test. Prove to the pods I'm human.”

Pidge finally looks away from him. “Lance...”

“Do it!”

“I really don't think you're going to like the results,” Pidge mutters.

Lance lets out a groan of frustration. It comes out more like a snarl.

 _Burn_ , Casper tells him, just a bit timid. It's the first time Lance has heard him since the visit with the Dessen. So much for blissful silence.

“Shut up,” Lance spits.

Pidge and Shiro share a worried glance.

Lance sighs. “I wasn't talking to...”

 _Burn!_ Cas insists.

“Damn it,” Lance growls. “What does it take to—get out! Or least be quiet!”

“Uh... Lance?” Hunk starts.

“What?” Lance snaps, vicious.

“Well,” Keith says, nose turned up slightly. Lance feels anger simmer through him. The haughty fucking bastard— “That's new,” Keith finishes.

“What? What the hell is it?” Lance glares across the room at Keith. Casper encourages him.

_Raze him to the ground, turn his body to ash, let the fire burn, burn, burn._

Shiro's gaze is wide—not quite terrified, not yet, but wary. “Lance, maybe you should calm...”

“Don't tell me to calm down,” Lance grits out. “You're not the one who is apparently some unknown amalgamation of alien bullshit.”

“Lance,” Pidge says sharply. “Shut the fuck up for two seconds and look at your reflection.”

Lance bites down on a scathing retort, tongue burning with unspoken venom. He turns to look in the glass of the healing pod behind him. The anger dims, though it doesn't disperse completely.

The scar from the claw that hit his cheek from the Dessen feast is still high on his cheekbone, but the markings: those are new. They almost look like flames, but as if drawn by a child. Jagged orange scars burned into his skin, branching out around his eyes.

Suddenly, Lance coughs. He feels something rise up his throat, and doubles over, gagging. The coughs wrack through him, harsh and grating, until something finally, finally, _snaps_.

Blood drips from Lance's nose and mouth. His body isn't made for this.

He breathes in, and the oxygen feeds the fire. Lance spits, tasting copper and soot on his tongue.

Smoke breathes out. Flame dances over his tongue.

 _Burn_ , Casper says, satisfied.

Lance straightens. He wipes the blood and ash from his face with his sleeve, and looks back at his reflection.

“Well,” he says quietly, gazing at the now-foreign face. “Guess I really am not human anymore.”

 

 

**251 Days Before**

When Lance was a kid, rather young, his elder brother had been entrusted with a BB air gun. Lance, himself, had been deemed too young to get one, and that's when the jealousy settled in between his ribs.

His brother, of course, wasted no opportunity to show off his skills. Aaron got Caterina, the eldest of their siblings, to spray paint a target onto one of the trees outside, and then proceeded to spend hours in the humid summer heat aiming shots into the tree bark. Lance would spend just as many of those hours watching him.

At some point, however, Aaron deemed Lance worthy enough to pass his skills on to. And thus begun the secret training sessions. When their mom was out shopping or busy dealing with something in the house, Aaron would carefully place the BB gun in Lance's small hands and nudge his arms into the right positions so that the BB hit into the wood of the target.

And when Aaron came back one day after playing with friends in the nearby orange grove, carrying the body of a pigeon he'd shot? Lance thought it was the coolest damn thing.

He vowed. He _vowed_.

So when one day, many summer afternoon trainings later, both Aaron and Lance's mom were out of the house, and the BB gun was just... conveniently, temptingly, left upon the kitchen table? Well, of course, Lance was going to take his chance. He was going to prove himself. If he brought back the limp body of a pigeon to his mother, of _course_ she'd let him have a BB gun of his own. And Aaron would be so proud of him. He was a good student.

So, sneaking out of the house, BB gun in hand, Lance slipped into the late afternoon, and made his way into the orange groves down the street. He slipped between the trees, laden with bright fruit, and stared down the rows into the soon-setting sun.

When he spotted it, pecking carefully through the fallen leaves under one of the orange trees, beautifully unsuspecting, Lance's heart soared. He'd thought the rapid pitpat of his heartbeat in his ears would have been loud enough to scare the pigeon away, but as he crouched down, aimed... Breathed in, out... and fired...

The bird fell, lifeless, to the dirt ground.

Lance scampered over to it, gleefully scrambling to pick up the limb body in his grubby childhood hands. The feathers brushed over his fingertips, blood trickling weakly out of a single, tiny puncture. Beady eyes stared back at him, boring into his chest and weighing the morality of his soul.

Lance screamed. He ran.

Death had touched him that day, brushed his fingers gently along Lance's spine. Lance saw the blood staining in his own hands, and found it made him sick to his stomach.

Never again.

So that day. He vowed. He _vowed_.

This is the memory Lance shares with the other paladins, mind open and focused. Perhaps he needs it to remind himself as much as he does it to lay himself bare before them.

“Christ,” Pidge breathes out. “That's traumatic.”

“Just a bit,” Lance answers dryly. He shrugs. “It was important at the time. Doesn't matter much, now.”

Hunk looks at Lance, an odd expression on his face. His brow is furrowed, deep lines of concern and confusion written into his countenance.

Lance turns away to look across the group. “So, who's next?”

 

 

**169 Days Before**

Alarms blare.

Lance is woken from a dreamless sleep. Perhaps it's not a sleep—perhaps, more a meditation than anything. He calls to the void; it answers. It welcomes him.

He managed a record time getting ready in the morning, slipping into his armor with the ease of practice, nimble fingers working to pull on his undersuit, and then the sturdier pieces of actual armor.

Lance is in the control room before Keith. He didn't quite beat Shiro, but he'll take it.

Allura raises a brow questioningly at him, appraising, but turns away as the other three paladins trickle into the room. They're all varying degrees of awake: Pidge, yawning, cracking their neck as they work out the kinks from likely sleeping in some hidden nook in the Castle again; Hunk, stretching his arms over his head with a languid fluidity, often groggy in the mornings; Keith, stiff, quiet, arms-crossed, and, as always, he looks tired but restless at the same time.

Allura sends them off with quick, precise instructions. They're in the lions and among the stars in another heartbeat—a single one, shared between them all. Voltron, it pulses.

Blue's voice in Lance's mind has been quiet recently. So has Casper's. Since their first interaction after the feast, he's gone relatively quiet. Perhaps he's realized the blaring announcements in Lance's mind were largely redundant.

Blue, on the other hand, seems reserved. Lance still greets her with a soft _hey, Beautiful_ , more out of habit than anything, but she no longer responds with her excited chirp at his presence. Maybe the novelty of a new paladin has worn off.

Oddly enough, Lance would have thought that the radio silence would have torn a rift between them, but he flies Blue better than ever. A calculating eye, quick reflexes, quicker thinking... He's easily coming up on Shiro in terms of piloting skill. The practice is finally paying off.

“Distress signal location coming up in about fifteen ticks,” Pidge announces over the comms.

“Copy,” Shiro reports. He leads the way, weaving through the asteroid belt surrounding the planet they're heading to.

The lions breach the atmosphere with ease, orange-tinted clouds of dust dissipating with the disturbance. They begin their descent.

“Wait,” Pidge says suddenly. “Wait...”

“What is it, Pidge?” Shiro asks.

“The distress signal is timemarked for less than a quintant ago, but the last transmission I'm getting from anywhere on this planet is from over a millennia ago. Also, the clouds interfere with the comms., so I can't contact Allura to confirm.”

“That's too convenient,” Keith states. “It's a trap.”

Shiro is quiet for a moment, deliberating. “Keith, Hunk, head back to the Castle, then come back if you're not needed.”

The red and yellow lions slip away from the group.

Meanwhile, though, Shiro stops Black's descent to the planet's surface.

“We're waiting?” Lance asks.

Shiro lets out a contemplative noise. “I have a bad feeling. I don't want to rush into anything.”

“These are valuable minutes to any refugees that might be down there,” Pidge protests quietly.

“The safety of the team takes priority,” Shiro says. “That includes A—”

Red bursts through the cloud cover, emerging like some angel—perhaps one of death.

“I was right,” Keith says grimly. “The Castle is under attack.”

 

Allura and Coran are very nearly overrun by the time the lions get back.

The paladins are pushed to their limits, Galra drones swarming through the Castle's halls. Another falls, bullet leaving a gaping hole in its synthetic chest, and Lance wonders, for a moment, how the fuck they all got in, but then his mind goes carefully, satisfyingly blank as he aims, fires, repeat.

A sharp cry of pain draws Lance's attention to the balcony above the entry hall where he's fighting. Keith hangs over the side of the upper floor, dangling freely, throat caught in the hand of a Galran general.

A choking noise, and then the general throws Keith down.

The thud of his body onto the floor below is sickening. The unforgiving _crack_ of bones, the final gasp of breath before he crumples against the rubble, body splayed unnaturally among the ruins.

Time freezes.

No one moves, and then Shiro is there: sudden, a force of nature. He slams into at least two drones on the way, ruthless in his panic.

Hunk, next, after spraying bullets into an oncoming assault, runs to Shiro's side, leaning over Keith.

Lance's gaze swivels towards the balcony from which Keith fell. Through his rifle's scope, he sees the sneer of the Galra general, smug and overconfident. He's firing off two shots even before he completely processes the situation.

One bounces off, the metallic clang of its deflection echoing in Lance's ears. The second, he hears make contact, even amid the cacophony of noise surrounding them, and Lance aims again. The space between his eyes throbs slightly, strained, like a sinus headache. Ignoring the flare of pain, he aims another shot.

It grazes the general's cheek as he jumps down from the balcony. He lands close to Keith, and Shiro readies to protect him while Hunk prepares to carefully lift him.

But the general ignores him in favor of the real enemy; Lance steps back once, bracing himself, and fires twice more.

Each bullet embeds deep into tough, leathery skin. The general approaches, unfazed. There's a snarl on his face. It's predatory, self-assured, and ignites something deep inside Lance.

Hatred sears through him. A memory, a ghost feeling, desire and the pop of maggots between his teeth. An ancient bond, a promise, a gift.

 _Burn_ , Lance says. He tastes the smoke on his tongue. Swallows soot and lets it boil in his stomach. Heat and hate, tangled in blood, inked into his bones by an old god, a new friend.

 _Burn_ , Lance intones, and the ancient god listens—for they are one now, molded into the same being with a destiny greater than this simple existence.

With a startled cry, the Galra bursts into flame.

Lance feels the wicked, satisfied grin take over before he can stop it.

Who's the predator now?

“Lance!” Pidge calls out a warning. “Behind—” They cut off with a grunt.

Lance feels instinct pull in his chest and he dodges to the side. The drones, unfeeling, shows no surprise. There's no cry of pain, either, when Lance fluidly shifts his bayard to a knife and decapitates it.

It doesn't feel; Lance feels no remorse.

“Lance, go with Hunk!” Shiro's orders come from where he's fighting off a Galra soldier and two drones.

“On it,” Lance answers, even as he's shifting back to his sniper and taking out one of the drones gaining ground against Shiro.

He feels numb with the thrill of power as he takes off after Hunk. It takes him a moment to come down from the high, to realize where they're going—the medbay.

Shock and recognition rattles Lance's nerves. Now numb with sudden concern, he follows a frantic Hunk into the room.

Hunk lays Keith's body on one of the counters, skin pale and—lifeless?

“His heart stopped,” Hunk gasps out. Lance realizes he's crying. “We need adrenaline—something—I don't know if the Castle has defibrillators?”

Lance nods, though Hunk is too busy looking through cabinets, rustling through bottles of odd-colored liquids, accompanied by the rattle of pills in turned-over containers. Lance glances once at Keith, and feels his skin go cold when he can't see Keith's chest move with any breath.

Lance turns to the nearest cabinet, throwing the glass door open hard enough it threatens to shatter. He snatches up a few bottles, squinting until the labels resolve themselves from Altean to English—but even that's a rough translation.

“We don't have time for this!” Lance snarls, grabbing blindly at another bottle.

“Wait—wait, I think I found something! This one is marked as a depressant, I think, so there must be a stimulant drug somewhere here...”

“We don't have time!” Lance cries. He nearly trips over the damn healing pod terminal—an echo, so, so long ago—as he scrambles towards Hunk, who's holding up a few syringes of various colored liquids.

“How many syringes of those do we have?”

“Uh... two or three of each?”

“Give,” Lance demands, and grabs at one of the syringes in Hunk's hands before he can protest.

Hunk lets out a high-pitched warning as Lance plunges the needle into his chest. He waits a few seconds—as long as he can bare to do nothing but simply _wait—_ and when nothing happens, moves onto the next syringe.

The next one, a syrupy blue liquid, hurts as it breaches his skin. The prick of pain from the needle is nothing in comparison, and Lance chokes on his gasp as he suddenly feels helplessly sluggish. “No,” he wheezes out. “Not t-that... Hunk, hit m-me.”

Hunk stares at him with wide eyes. Lance wants to slap him to get him moving, but his limbs feel too heavy. He makes an annoyed, pained noise from the back of the throat, and sways dangerously, catching himself barely as it hits the counter. “Hu...”

Hunk screams as he grabs the nearest unused syringe and slams the needle into Lance's chest. This one burns, and Lance lets out a cry as the fluid mixes with his blood.

“I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry,” Hunk chants in a horrified whisper.

“Not—no,” Lance gasps out, shaking his head.

Hunk picks up the next syringe—two left—and with a bit more care, presses it to Lance's chest.

It's like the first great breath after being underwater for too long. Coughing, gasping, Lance regains control over his limbs and voice and mind. “That—” he splutters. “That's the one—”

Suddenly, Lance is staring at the ceiling. He's not sure why. And then he's staring at nothing.

 

Lance falls forward out of the healing pod. The room is dimmed, blue lights casting their cold touch across the ground, across Keith's face, too-still in the pod next to Lance's. Lance catches himself on his hands and knees, body convulsing with a wracking cough. Something drips from his lips. He spits it from his mouth.

Crawling out of the pod, Lance curls up, pulling his legs to his chest. His entire body is tense, electrified, unknown.

He waits.

Numb. Fire.

So fucking cold...

His mother's hugs, braiding Caterina's hair, the caress of a warm palm, soothing as it rubs over his back. Lance leans into it. Allura stares down at him, caution and concerned mingled in her gaze.

They both wait.

“It's my fault,” Allura says, later. She leans mournfully against Keith's healing pod. “I let the Galra in. They said they were refugees. I shouldn't have believed them.”

“He's gonna be fine,” Lance whispers back through dry lips. There's a small black puddle next to him on the ground, where he'd spit out soot mixed with his saliva. It coats the insides of his lungs. The inside of his skin.

Allura presses her lips together. She pins Lance with an unreadable stare. “Are you?”

Lance stares back. He licks his lips, cracked, and then dries them against in the next moment when he breathes out of his mouth.

Allura's shoulders deflate. “Go to bed, Lance.”

Lance blinks. He goes.

 


	3. but his humanity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a note that this was written before s5 so lance's sibs are all my own hc instead of canon names

**??? Days Before**

Warmth presses invitingly against Lance. He feels the gasp of breath against his cheek. The low whine against his ear sends his pulse racing.

He pushes his fingers against sweat-damp skin, mapping his fingerprints across flesh.

The sound of bubbling. Something wet drips onto Lance's shoulder. Copper fills the air. Lance tastes it on his tongue. Part of him revels in it, remembers the taste of berry-blood—how he'd somehow deluded himself into enjoying the metallic rust on his lips. Now, he knows full well what that scent is. It surrounds him.

Hair tickles against his neck, and Lance presses his nose into it. Underneath the scent of blood is sweat and orange groves.

Aaron's body slumps away from Lance.

Lance stares at him. A high whimper falls from his mouth and lands in the sand at his feet. The beach is familiar. So, too, from previous dreams, is the twisted look of horror on Aaron's face.

Unfamiliar is the clear sky, Galra fleets absent.

Unfamiliar, the blood staining Lance's palms, running between his fingers.

“Lance?” someone whispers from behind him.

Lance looks up from Aaron, stares across the beach. Relatives, friends... the other paladins—they all lay dead upon the sand. The moonlight reveals the dark patches of blood trickling weakly from the gaping holes Lance has left in their chests. Ripped out their hearts.

“What have you done?” Caterina whispers at his shoulder. “What did you do to them?”

Lance chokes out a sob. He turns to Caterina and clutches at her. He hears the seams of her shirt rip where his grip pulls too-tight.

There are tears streaming down Caterina's cheeks. Lance jerkily paws at her face, bloody hands leaving disjointed streaks of red across her skin. One hand caresses along her jaw; the other clings to the back of her neck.

The hold is familiar. Deadly.

Lance's arms shake with the effort of resisting the simple pressure... the feel of a limp body in his arms.

He lets out another whimper.

What's one more?

“N-no,” he manages. Sobs.

Caterina cries out. Lance doesn't know if it's the fear or if he actually—actually—killed—

And then he wakes up.

 

 

**167 Days Before**

Lance has tried upping the dosage of the Altean sleeping drug. The lack of rest is finally starting to wear on him. Even though he's made marked progress in training, surpassing Hunk and Pidge long ago, he's lagging behind from sheer exhaustion.

His skin itches with a thin layer of ash.

By the second night, Lance is tempted to stuff himself in one of the pods for the sake of letting his body get some damn rest. Except that he's not quite willing to subject himself to eight straight hours of non-stop nightmares. The healing pods, as far as Lance knows, don't have a way to turn off his brain.

So instead, he heads for his lion. Maybe a change of environment will help. And Blue always is... well maybe not _eager_ , but willing to see Lance.

Like him, Blue has grown up since they first met. No longer is she the cheerful, child-like lion Lance once knew.

Lance drags himself into his lion's cockpit and curls up on the pilot seat. Blue doesn't activate—she knows he doesn't really want anything—but she does greet him with a subtle purr.

“Hey,” Lance mutters back, pulling his knees to his chest. “You wouldn't happen to have an elephant tranquilizer or something, would you?”

Blue's response is a vague questioning noise in Lance's head.

“Never mind,” Lance mumbles, resting his cheek against his knee. His words come out muffled, but it doesn't matter because Blue can read his mind, anyway. “Jus' trying to get some rest.”

Something hums at Lance's side. The armrest of the pilot's seat opens, revealing what looks vaguely like a stethoscope but with a longer tube.

Blue sends Lance a vague story. Something about the former blue paladin. Lance translates it from a series of feelings and mental images to: Blaytz had insomnia, and this tube thing helped.

As Lance reaches for it, Blue flashes a warning across the backs of his eyelids. Something about quintessence. Something about only using it for emergencies. Something about change.

Lance pulls the tube from it's place nestled in the armrest and attaches it to the inside of his wrist. It's an emergency, Lance decides, because if he falls asleep without it, he knows he's not going to get any rest.

As his mind wanders towards unconsciousness, Lance is embraced with the cold, medical touch of quintessence. It ices over him, raises goosebumps and the hair on his nape.

Cold. Not quite dreamless.

But instead of Aaron and Caterina, he stares back at the unseeing expressions of strangers, bodies limp and slumped in some foreign, unknown building. No more beach. No more faces of those he loves.

Lance will take what he can get.

From then on, he sleeps in the blue lion.

 

 

**96 Days Before**

They stalk around each other, circling like the lions they pilot. They're both breathing hard, chests heaving, and Keith's hair is mussed up and sticking out in odd directions. His arms are tucked close to his body, forearms protecting his chest, which is useless anyway because Lance has been banned from aiming at Keith's still-bruised chest after landing a cheap shot in their last spar.

Keith blows his bangs out of his eyes, stops and stares Lance down. Lance glares back.

Keith's gaze narrows. He starts walking again. They circle. Lions.

He's trying to wear down Lance's patience, but Lance can see the way his fingers twitch. He's still pissed Lance beat him the last round, so there's only a matter of time before he strikes.

Lance can wait. Let Keith come to him.

And then it happens.

Between the two of them, Keith is far quicker. They both know this, and Keith uses it to his advantage as he darts forward, trying to sweep Lance's feet out from under him. Lance dances away.

Keith lets out a huff, which turns to a hiss as Lance aims a blow at his shoulder. Keith turns just enough that it glances off, but the hit throws off his balance.

Lance pushes forward, knocking Keith off his feet. They both sprawl across the training room floor, Lance on top. Keith's hands slam against Lance's chest. He shoves, hard, and surges upward in an attempt to swap their positions, but Lance squeezes his knees against Keith's waist and manages to keep his balance.

A moment later, he has Keith's hands pinned down to the floor.

Keith lets out some sort of snarl, a Galran noise that rumbles in his chest. He struggles to regain a hold against Lance, and fails, feebly slumping against the ground, panting.

Lance smirks down at him, pride coiling around his ribs.

“Well,” a voice says from nearby. Shiro's shadow falls over them. “I suppose Lance wins, again. Fairly, this time.”

“Fair?” Keith growls from under Lance. He glares up at Shiro, then at Lance. “Fucking no, it's not. I'm still hurt.”

“Boo-hoo,” Lance deadpans, and picks himself up off of Keith. He heads to the edge of the room to grab his water pouch. Satisfaction settles smugly in his limbs.

Allura squints at him as Shiro helps Keith off the ground. “I would have expected more bragging after the first time you bested Keith.”

Lance's brow furrows as he drinks. He pauses long enough to say, “Why?”

“Because you usually brag at just managing to get a hit in,” Pidge quips.

Keith slowly makes his way over, leaning against the wall and sliding down into a sitting position while he catches his breath. He makes a pained expression when he breathes deep.

“You needed longer in the pod,” Lance tells him. Keith glances up at him wearily. “Anyway,” Lance continues, “Why would I need to brag when you all saw me beat him?”

“Is that you admitting that all the other times it was just talk?” Pidge fires back.

“Is it?” Lance says, and shrugs. “Maybe it is. I don't really keep track.”

Allura is watching him, analyzing. Lance watches her back, waiting to see if he passes her tests.

Eventually, she finds—or perhaps she doesn't—what she's looking for, and she turns away. “Hunk, Shiro. You're next.”

Lance goes to lean against the wall as Hunk and Shiro ready to spar.

There's a quiet noise at his side.

“Thanks,” Keith says softly, not looking up at Lance.

“For what?”

“For not making a big deal out of it.”

Lance makes a puzzled expression, but Keith still doesn't look up to see it. Finally, he says, if nothing else, the truth: “It wasn't for your benefit.”

 

 

**94 Days Before**

The Castle shakes, straining against the pull of some otherworld void. Lance recognizes the way his body shifts, the way balance tips, tightens, taut, snap. A wormhole. They've gone through a wormhole.

As Lance's world shudders back into perspective, he emerges from his room and glances down the hallway.

Odd, he thinks, that they'd jump without telling him. Usually Allura announces their destinations, or, if they're under attack, sets off the alarms or sends the lions before they retreat. Besides, running away through the wormholes risks the Galra following them through to currently safe quadrants.

The halls are eerily quiet. Usually—or perhaps this is only a recent sense—he can hear chatter from the lounge, or the sound of Keith or Shiro sparring with the gladiator in the training room. Now, though, there is nothing.

Lance wanders towards the lounge. Footsteps approach.

“Lance.” Allura's voice is curt. “Come with me.”

Lance turns and follows. “Is this a mission?”

Allura is quiet for a moment. Her shoulders are tense. “No.”

Silence weighs on them both as they make their way towards the escape pods. Allura begins readying one. Lance waits, standing and watching, as she sets coordinates and prepares for launch.

“Get in,” she orders.

Lance obeys. He sits in the co-pilot seat, assuming Allura will be flying.

“Can I ask where we're going?”

Allura settles into the pilot seat. “You've been there. If you remember.”

“Princess,” Lance says carefully. Something's up with her. “We've been a lot of places.”

“Balmera X-95-Vox.”

“Why would I not remember the Balmera?” Lance asks.

Instead of Allura, the engine of the pod answers him, exploding into life. Lance's stomach drops with the force of their acceleration towards the stars.

“There's something wrong with you, Lance,” Allura grits out into the silence stretching between them.

Lance frowns. “I feel fine. I mean that not human thing a while back was pretty freaky? But I think I'm over it. I'm good, really.”

Allura shakes her head. She doesn't look at him when she speaks. “Not like that. I was blind to it with my father's AI, but I will not let you be corrupted.”

Lance stares at her. “Corrupted? Allura, what are you talking about?”

“You're not just inhuman, Lance. You're losing your humanity.”

“You're crazy,” Lance whispers. “Allura, I'm _fine_.”

“You're _not_.”

Lance swallows hard. There's something lodged in his chest. Smoke, maybe, or what's left of his morality. “You're... not going to kill me, are you?”

Allura jerks at his words, flinching away and finally turning to look at him. Her expression is horrified. “Of course not! Why would you think...” she trails off, perhaps realizing something. She sighs, dropping her head before she looks back out of the cockpit to maneuver into a landing on the Balmera's surface.

“I'm not going to kill you, Lance,” she says quietly. She kills the engines. “Nor am I sending you to the Balmera to have them kill you. The Balmerans are spiritualists. They can help.”

Lance nods carefully. There's an argument on his tongue, that he doesn't need anything, that he's fine, that he feels better and fights better than ever before and wouldn't trade that for anything. But Allura climbs out of the pod, and Lance follows her, and the words stay trapped behind his lips like the ash that sometimes drags itself from his lungs.

Allura leads the way towards the crater that leads into the heart of the Balmera. On their way, they pass a few of the Balmeras lounging on the surface, enjoying the sunlight, admiring the way their host flourishes with life. A couple wave to Allura as she passes. Almost timid, as if she doesn't want to respond, Allura waves back.

Lance's neck prickles with anticipation. He can his heartbeat in his ears—or is that the Balmera's? Echoing through his bones and shaking his core?

As they descend, the rocky walls begin to block out the sun, and something in Lance panics. He freezes in place before he knows what's happening.

Allura takes a few more steps before she realizes that Lance isn't following her still. She turns. “Something wrong?”

Lance sucks in a heaving breath, glancing between Allura and the sky. He's shaking, he thinks. The Balmeran heartbeat, pounding in his blood. A echoed roar, flames engulfing all, the touch of a blazing star.

“Come on.”

“N-no,” Lance whimpers out. He steps backwards, once, and loses his balance. Falling onto his back, Lance's fingers scramble against the rough path, fingertips scraping harshly on the rocks. “No, no.”

Allura's brow furrows, concern inked into her gaze. “There really is something wrong,” she mutters out. Then a bit louder, more reassuring: “You've been down here before, Lance. It's fine. It's safe. Come on.”

Something quivers in Lance's gut. He shudders, a full body action that starts in his stomach, echoing through his ribs, shaking his throat.

Fire dribbles from his lips, molten and searing. Swallowed sunlight—long, long ago. He remembers it, remembers the taste of stardust. Some were cold, tangy on his tongue, and some flared hot, burned him from the inside out and set his skin ablaze eternally. He remembers family, now long-gone, their charred corpses left upon the surfaces of planets when their long bodies cooled, magma solidifying into a carcass.

Now, Lance lets the flame tumble into his lap, spill upon his chest. It burns his clothes—warms his skin. Reminds him of home. Of sunlight.

Allura lets out a noise. It might be a curse.

Then there's another voice, and then Lance is being lifted. Turning, he spills fire onto a Balmeran's hands. The voice is familiar. As he's carried deeper into the Balmera, Lance keeps his eyes trained on the disappearing light. Home. Home, goodbye.

 

When Lance begins to resolve his surroundings into true meaning, he's propped up against a cave wall. Allura, Shay, and Shay's grandmother are conversing a few yards away.

“He's bound to something. It's imprinted on him. I can try to sever their connection, but there are other things too,” Shay's grandmother is saying. “Hexes and curses from dark beings.”

“Curing him might do irreparable damage,” Shay says quietly.

“There must be something,” Allura pleads. “There's—he's—I don't—”

_There's something wrong with you, Lance._

“We can try a ritual,” Shay's grandmother says. “But it's only palliative.”

“It'll have to do,” Allura says. “I'm not risking losing him.”

Losing me? Lance thinks. Or losing who you expect me to be?

Lance lets out a croaking noise from his throat to inform the group he's conscious.

Allura's head jerks to look at him. Shay and her grandmother move more calmly, regarding Lance with their yellow gazes. Like sunlight, almost, but without the right taste.

Shay walks over, careful with her large limbs. She kneels down next to him, resting her hands on her knees. “Hello, Lance.”

She speaks as if talking to a child. Lance let's her patronize him for a while longer.

“We're going to help you,” she continues, smiling. “We're going to give you something to make you better, but I need you to stay still.”

Lance considers, for a moment, disobeying. He never wanted this in the first place. But then Allura would be mad, and he doesn't want to deal with the effort of fighting her. Resolving himself, he nods.

“Good,” Shay says, and places her hand against the cave wall near Lance's head.

Light envelopes them, covering in a gentle blanket. It feels similar to the healing pods, right before they release their captives back into the waking world. While the pod is still decompressing, wakefulness returns to their victim, light consuming their dark mind for a heartbeat before they're forced from their safe cocoon and into the arms of those waiting.

How quaint, Lance thinks.

The light fades away, and when Shay draws her hand back, in her palm is resting a small crystal. It's tinged yellow—not sunlight, but sunflowers maybe.

“Stay still,” Shay says gently, and with her free hand brushes a few singed threads of Lance's shirt away from his chest.

Movements slow, she pushes the crystal against his sternum. And pushes, pushes.

Lance gasps as the first pricks of pain slice against his skin, the uneven surface of the crystal cutting into flesh. He blinks away tears. Liquid flowing. Not tears, but blood—running down his chest.

The crystal pushes further in until it sticks. It plants roots there, nestled into Lance's ribcage like it fucking belongs there. Lance hates it already.

“What...” Lance chokes out.

“Shh,” Shay coos. Her hand raises again to touch the Balmera. Light erupts around them. “It's okay.”

This time, when the light fades, so does the pain. So does Lance's consciousness.

 

 

**89 Days Before**

Lance wakes screaming.

He thrashes against Blue's pilot seat, pain shooting up his arm when he rips away the tube connected to his wrist.

Lance checks Blue's interface. Two vargas.

Two vargas that he's slept. In total. Since they visited the Balmera, five quintants ago.

Lance smiles sadistically at his reflection in the blacked-out front window. It twists the markings around his eyes into something unnatural.

He can't sleep. It's too much. The nightmares are back tenfold.

Well, no sense staying in Blue, cramped, if he knows he's not going to get any rest.

Making his way out of Blue's cockpit, and eventually, her hangar, Lance sets about wandering the Castle. He's kept himself awake the past five nights by exploring the nooks and hidden rooms of the Caslte of Lions. There are remnants of the people who lived here, tucked away in corners and away from prying gazes.

But Lance has nothing better to do, and his waking hours are spent training, on missions, bringing some sort of equivalent to caffeine to Pidge, who apparently has another lead on their brother.

Lance spends hours making up stories for the lives once lived here. The servant who had a dramatic affair with some foreign diplomat. The dance of assassins and courtship alike in private rooms. The lingering scent of perfume on a pillow, the memory of one last night spent curled in a lover's arms.

When the Castle lights begin to brighten to announce the equivalent of daytime, Lance makes his way towards the training deck. Shiro is always the first one up, rearing to work as hard as he can to defeat the Galra, and today is no exception.

Lance is waiting for him when he gets into the training room.

One of Shiro's eyebrows quirk up when he sees Lance for the fourth time. “Couldn't sleep again?”

Lance gives a lethargic shrug and doped smile. “Nope.”

Shiro starts stretching. “You okay?”

Lance lets out a hum. “When you're ready, let's spar.”

“You should get some sleep, Lance,” Shiro scolds.

“If I could, I would. I promise. Let's just spar. Maybe the exhaustion will knock me out.” It's a lie. He knows it won't. He's been a dead man walking for at least the past two quintants already. It won't make a difference.

Shiro regards him for a moment, scrutinizing. Finally, he sighs, and shakes his head, rising to get into position a few feet away from Lance. “You know if you ever want to talk...”

“Yeah,” Lance says, and drops into a loose fighting stance. “Yeah, I know.”

Shiro's hand lashes forward.

Lance leans away, keeping his balance only by stepping back. He retaliates by aiming a hit at Shiro's gut, but Shiro curls into himself, drawing his elbows closer to his body, and Lance's hand connects with the bone of his forearm. The impact sends a jolt to his shoulder, and Lance hesitates.

Shiro takes his chance, slamming his hand—the Galran one—into Lance's chest. Lance feels the dull ache when it lands heavily across the crystal, under his shirt. He smiles as he goes down.

“Again,” Lance wheezes out, though there's a lightness in his muscles he hasn't felt in days. “Again.”

By the third time Shiro lands the exact same move on Lance, he starts to realize something's up.

“You're not changing your tactics,” Shiro criticizes. “You need to try something different if you want a shot at winning.”

“I know,” Lance says, getting up. “Again.”

This time, Shiro waits before he throws the first hit. He tilts his chin out at Lance. You go, it says. Show me.

Lance lets his arms fall to his sides. “Come on,” he taunts. “I'm wide open Shiro.”

Shiro straightens out of his fighting stance completely, looking at Lance with concern. “Lance, what's going on?”

Lance takes a couple steps forward, until he's close enough to reach for Shiro's Galra arm and press it against his chest. “Come on,” he whispers. He chokes on the words.

He's crying. He hadn't noticed.

“Lance, no,” Shiro says, frowning.

“P-please,” Lance gasps out. His breath catches on a sob. “ _Please..._ ”

“Lance, you need sleep,” Shiro says softly, trying to draw his hand back. Lance tightens his grip, jerking it back towards his chest.

“You don't get it,” Lance says, and suddenly he's snarling the words. “I can't sleep—I can't do anything like this—I'm broken.”

“Lance, you're just tir—” Shiro starts.

“ _Faulty_ ,” Lance spits. He looks up at Shiro, anger swirling in his blood. “Just like you. _Champion_. Killed so many and yet you _couldn't win_.”

“Lance—” Shiro warns, and flinches.

“A broken human,” Lance continues, pushing Shiro's hand harder against his chest until it hurts. “A broken _Galra_. You can't even use what they gave you because you're afraid of it, afraid of yourself, _weak_. Useless. Voltron doesn't deser—”

Lance cuts off with a broken noise as Shiro shoves him away, hard. Smoke tinges Lance's nostrils. There's a hole burnt into his shirt, exposing the crystal, turning the exposed tip charred black. But it's still there, intact, invading.

“L-Lance,” Shiro gasps out, pained.

“Oh for fuck's sake,” Lance hisses. “Start training sequence level 1.”

Shiro falls back, staggering to the floor. “Wh-what?”

The training bot materializes nearby, dancing from toe to toe in an excited greeting. Immediately, Lance sweeps his leg out, knocking the bot to the floor, and wrenches it's spear from it's hands. The bot lays there for a moment, programmed to act stunned for sufficient time.

Shiro starts, whole body jerking as Lance turns the spear so the blade faces his chest.

“Lance—no!” Shiro shouts.

Lance digs the blade into his skin. He grits he teeth against the pain. Revels in the smell of blood. Soars through starlight when he plants the other end of the spear on the ground and twists it, and the leverage rips the crystal from his skin.

Victorious, Lance lets out a cry of triumph. He feels blood rushing down his chest, slicks his hands with it and _tastes_. Flavored with freedom, it dances on his tongue.

Vindictive, Lance scrambles for the crystal before Shiro can get close enough to grab either it or him. Cackling, manic, _alive—alive alive he can taste the sunlight again—_ Lance throws the crystal against the wall as hard as he can.

It shatters.

And as the pieces fall to the floor, Lance falls with them, exhaustion seeping into his bones.

He sleeps. He sleeps well. It is dreamless.

He's free.

 

 

**86 Days Before**

The wound is already healed. He hadn't used a pod.

Allura won't talk to him except to give orders.

 

 

**25 Days Before**

Lance's foot taps impatiently against the floor. The limb remembers this place, remembers home.

They're here not because the Vasili need help, but rather because Voltron needs the Vasili.

Well, not Voltron. Not quite.

They found Matthew Holt in an off-planet research compound after Pidge tracked the movements of prisoners there. Storming the compound, they'd found Matt intact but unresponsive. Pidge had dropped everything to go to his prone form, and while they cried, pleaded, with their brother to wake up, Lance stood guard, decimating any attacking Galran soldiers or drones to piles of ash until the other paladins got there for an extraction.

But there's something wrong with Matt. Objectively wrong—not like Allura's view of Lance.

“Our technicians will do their best.”

Lance's gaze flicks up to Elatha. His expression is fond, or at least as fond as the ruler of the Vasili is allowed to be towards a practical stranger.

“I know,” Lance says. “I have no doubt you will do all you can.”

Elatha lets out a contemplative noise. He moves closer, leaving Lance to tilt his head back to see Elatha's face from where he's sitting.

Elatha reaches out, brushing his thumb over Lance's brow. “This is new...” he murmurs curiously.

Lance tolerates the touch. He could burn Elatha to a crisp for it, and as is, heat spikes through his blood. But he doesn't. He sits, and he takes. Because Elatha has been kind to him before.

“Yes,” Lance says instead.

Elatha retracts his hand. “You've changed,” he observes, voice cooling. “You've grown. Or perhaps—lost some of the starlight in your eyes.”

Lance presses his lips together. He doesn't have a response.

Instead, after a moment of silence and Elatha's scrutinizing gaze, Lance asks, “Can I help you with something?”

Elatha seems to let out a long breath like a sigh. It falls from his lips. “I suppose, yes. I was sent to retrieve you. Our technicians would like to speak to the patient's guardians.”

Lance rises to follow Elatha. “I'm not his guardian.”

“Friend, then.”

Lance keeps his mouth shut. He doesn't argue that he's not really that either. He walks silently after Elatha.

He joins the others in a small room. There are benches lining the walls, and a door on the far side. Shiro looks up from where he's seated, and then his gaze flicks back to Pidge, who's pacing across the middle of the room with tear streaks down her cheeks.

Lance skirts the edge of the room and stands a few feet away from Hunk.

The far door opens and another Vasili makes their way in.

Pidge stops pacing, staring at them with wide eyes.

“We've done what we can—”

“There must be something,” Pidge hiccups out in a rush.

“Shh, Little One. I'm not done,” says the technician. “There is... yet one thing we have not done. The Galra have poisoned him, poisoned what makes him human. We may yet be able to replace his heart with something mechanical—artificial—but it means he will lose who he is.”

“Like amnesia?” Shiro asks. He doesn't look like he's been crying, as Pidge has, but there are dark bags under his eyes.

“Not quite,” the Vasili says, “Though he will also have amnesia as a result. He will lose what you call a soul. Essentially, he will become the perfect living machine. He will still maintain willpower and free will, but he will be lacking in any moral direction.” They turn to Pidge. “As his next of kin, we thought it best to ask you for your decision on this matter.”

“Is there any chance...” Pidge says quietly. “Without this...”

“Unfortunately, I don't foresee a recovery unless we proceed as I've described.”

“I n-need time,” Pidge gasps out. Fresh tears leak out of the corners of their eyes.

“Two vargas. I fear any longer may diminish our chances of even this succeeding.”

Pidge nods.

The technician slips back out of the room.

Silence falls upon them. Shiro reaches out to Pidge, draws them in, and wraps a comforting arm around Pidge's shoulders after convincing them to sit next to him.

Lance stares at the wall, an indeterminate point above Pidge's head.

He wonders if it would be so bad to be a robot. Things would be simpler, would they not? Lance taps his foot, the feeling of it echoing up his repaired leg. How different would it be to replace a heart? Not horribly, Lance decides. If it only it was him who the Galra had poisoned.

Suddenly, Lance frowns, thinking back to the scars decorating his body. They've already poisoned him. It's already too late to save him, but Matt...

Perhaps whatever is left in Lance might thrive in Matt.

Lance's gaze snaps to Pidge. “Take my heart,” he states.

The room turns to stare at him.

“W-what?” Hunk manages first. “What do you mean, Lance?”

“Give my heart to Matt,” Lance tells Pidge. “Put the fake one in me.”

Pidge's eyes glimmer with tears. They curl into themselves, mouth fallen open. He sees the hope spark in their eyes, and then the guilt settle on their shoulders. They want this. They hate that they do.

“Lance, no,” Hunk says sharply. “No, you can't. You wouldn't be you!”

Lance turns to look at Hunk, cocking his head. “I'm already fucked,” he deadpans. “Just ask Allura.”

Hunk whirls to face her. Allura, leaning against the wall, crosses her arms and stares down. He refuses to meet anyone's gaze.

“At least Matt will still be human, then,” Lance continues.

“Lance,” Shiro says, scowling, “Voltron needs you.”

“I can still fight,” Lance insists. He turns to Keith, who's sitting on the floor on Shiro's other side. “Keith, come on. You've always hated me, right? Back me up here. You should be celebrating.”

Keith recoils. “Hated you? Lance, what the fuck—I—no way. Shiro's right Voltron needs you. This is the sorta self-sacrificing bullshit you always pull, and you never come out ahead, ever.”

Lance snorts. “Great teamwork, buddy, real supportive.”

“Lance, seriously, you can't do this,” Hunk says. He scrambles towards Lance, latching onto his shoulders and physically shaking Lance as if he can shake these crazy notions out of Lance head through his ears. “You. Can't. Do. This.”

Lance pushes Hunk off, relatively gently, all things considered, and then steps around Hunk to look at Pidge.

Conflict passes over their face. They're biting harshly into their bottom lip, teeth digging in as if they might find answers under the skin.

“Lance—” Shiro starts, but Lance cuts him off.

“It's my choice, isn't it?” Lance snaps. He doesn't look at anyone but Pidge. This time, kinder but still firm: “It's my choice.”

Quietly, so quietly, Pidge lets words tumble from their bitten lips: “You know I'd never ask you to do this...”

Lance grins. It's wild. Excited. Maybe, maybe, just a little bit sad. “I know,” he says. “I know, and that's why you don't have to ask. We're doing it.”

 

 

**23 Days Before**

Lance feels like he's floating.

There's a warmth in his chest and a lightness to his muscles. A faint ticking noise.

He listens to the sound of his mechanical heartbeat. Tick-thump. Tick-thump. Tick—click.

Tap. Tap tap.

Lance opens his eyes. The ceiling is bare. He sits up.

“OhmyGod—you're—you're awake.”

Lance doesn't say anything in response to that, because, well, it's true, isn't it?

Suddenly Pidge is latched onto Lance's middle, arms squeezing around him. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Her touch makes Lance's skin crawl.

Lance carefully peels Pidge's limbs from his waist.

“S-sorry!” Pidge gasps out, flinging herself away. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” Lance informs them. He turns and swings his legs over the side of the cot he awoke on. He stands. Walks towards the door.

“Lance?” Pidge asks. “Where are you...?”

Lance pauses. He does bother turning to face her. “We have a mission, right? To defeat the Galra. Better get back to that.”

Pidge is silent for a moment. “...Yeah.”

The sound of a sob.

Tick-thump. Tick-thump. Tick-thump.

 

 

**10 Days Before**

There's the sound of a sigh as Shiro enters the training room. Lance doesn't spare him a glance from where he's digging the sharp blade into a training droid's chest. There's another behind him. He ducks and kicks out with his mechanical leg, listening to satisfying thud of collision as the bot goes down. He decapitates that one with a quick slice.

The scimitar in his hand pulses with its own heartbeat. The glint of purple along the curve of the blade echoes back a history far more ancient than Lance's current body, and perhaps longer than the one before that.

It's Keith's knife, activated and pulsing with connection in his hand.

Lance isn't sure when he could do that. He's not sure if it's because he's Galra enough to activate it so much as he's heartless enough.

Shrugging, Lance tosses the weapon to the side. His bayard is more fun, now that he can change its shape at will.

Shiro meets his gaze across the room. His arms are crossed. “When did you last sleep?”

“About two quintants ago.”

“How long?”

“F...four vargas?”

“Jesus, Lance,” Shiro huffs. “You're worse than I am.”

“Better,” Lance corrects. “Sleep is a luxury we don't have, and an unnecessary human trait, at that.”

Shiro squints at him. “I don't suppose I can convince you to rest?”

“No. But you could spar with me.”

Shiro sighs. “I suppose that's the best I'll get.”

Shiro comes closer, and they both drop into a fighting stance.

“Rules?” Shiro asks.

“Anything goes.”

“Right. Ready... set...” Shiro barely manages the word “Go” before Lance is rushing him.

Surprised, Shiro stumbles a bit, but he finds his footing before Lance can take advantage of the quick move. Shiro's aiming a hit that brushes past Lance's shoulder. He can feel the force of it blow past him as he dodges away.

In retaliation, Lance ducks low and swings a punch towards Shiro's side. Shiro pivots at the hips and brings his arm down, and Lance's hit collides with the metal of his forearm instead. Shiro shifts his weight, and Lance has barely enough time to pull back before Shiro's knee flies through the space Lance just occupied.

While Shiro's balance is rocky, Lance takes his chance. He pushes forward as Shiro is drawing his leg back down, and while the move leaves Lance vulnerable, it also pushes them both completely over to the ground. Lance lands half on top of Shiro, and finds himself almost immediately in a choke hold.

Writhing, Lance struggles to do one of two things—escape or flip over so he can pin Shiro down. Neither succeeds.

Time to resort to other methods.

Anything goes.

A simmer, a spark—Lance is breathing out fire, aiming his flaming breath at Shiro's arm. It's the metal one, conveniently—though that wouldn't have stopped Lance, really—so Shiro doesn't feel pain. The move shouldn't work, if Shiro was smart, but the fire still spooks him into letting Lance go.

Lance whirls, digging one knee into Shiro's chest and the other into the wrist of his flesh arm. One hand slams Shiro's metal wrist down onto the floor as he tries to bring it up to push Lance off, and the other hand circles around his throat. Long fingers dig into flesh, like Lance once did so many times in his dreams.

They stare at each other. Fear, perhaps, sparks in Shiro's eyes.

The training room door opens. Shiro's eyes flick towards the sound. Lance continues to watch his prey.

His fingers tighten their hold, choking, killing, surviving.

“Lance, stand _down_ ,” Allura growls.

Lance stays still, but leaves his hand pressed onto Shiro's throat. He looks up at Allura. “Why?”

Allura falters for a moment before her gaze goes hard. “That is your _teammate_ ,” she spits. “You do _not_ hurt him.”

Lance watches her for a moment: the angry set of her shoulders, the dark expression, the fear in the tightness of her muscles. He releases Shiro, straightening and stepping away. Shiro stumbles up, coughing but otherwise fine, Lance is sure.

“You don't like me,” Lance tells her.

Allura presses her lips together.

“You don't like seeing me,” Lance continues. “So that means you must be here to tell us something.”

Allura looks away, jaw working.

“Princess?” Shiro croaks out. “Is something up?”

“We have coordinates,” Allura grits out finally. “We'll be ambushing Zarkon tomorrow.”

She says _Zarkon_ with less hatred than she musters for _Lance_.

“Wonderful,” Lance says, pleased.

Her steely eyes snap to him. “You're not going.”

Lance frowns. “You can't do that.”

“You're a wild card, Lance. You just tried to kill Shiro while sparring. I can't let you go on any missions, much less the most important one we've ever done.”

“That's idiotic,” Lance huffs. “I just beat Shiro. I'm your best fighter. I'm an asset.”

“You're a _detriment_.”

“I'm going,” Lance insists. “You can't stop me.”

“I can damn well _try_ ,” Allura snaps.

“Princess,” Shiro tries to sooth. “Maybe... Maybe there's a workaround.”

Allura takes a deep breath. She closes her eyes for a heartbeat, and when she reopens them, a bit of the heat is gone. Foolish. “Perhaps. Do you have a suggestion?”

Shiro goes quiet. Glancing at him, he looks displeased.

“Go with him.”

Allura looks equally disapproving.

Shiro inhales slowly. “You can fly the blue lion in, but we'll still have Lance here as backup. Coran can man the Castle.”

Lance shrugs. “That's alright with me.”

Allura lets out an unintelligible string of phases. Curses, maybe, or perhaps a prayer.

“Fine,” she grits out. “We're flying out in fifteen vargas. Don't be late, and don't make me regret this. Shiro, come with me.”

Shiro hurries to follow Allura's rapid footsteps. “Did you need me for something?” he asks as they slip out of the training room.

Distantly, Lance hears: “I didn't want to leave you alone with that _thing_.”

Lance turns back to the center of the room.

“Begin simulation.”

 

 

**9 Days Before**

The Galra aren't dumb. They know that Voltron's power is in their combined strength.

So what did they do? Split up.

It's a good tactic, Lance admits, if not futile.

The other four paladins are tracking a wounded Zarkon through the halls of his own battleship. Rats in a maze.

Meanwhile, Lance and Allura are taking out Haggar.

Or, at least, supposed to be.

If Allura hadn't insisted on tagging along they wouldn't be in their current predicament, but if she hadn't come, then Lance wouldn't have come. And Lance is definitely needed. Not that the other paladins are complete amateurs, but...

They could use some work.

Allura especially, apparently, as she struggles against the choke hold Haggar has on her.

“Don't move,” snarls Haggar, claws held under Allura's chin while the other hand yanks on her hair. “Or the Altean princess dies.”

“How could you—” Allura spits, struggling. “To your own people!”

Haggar leans in close to Allura's ear, whispering what perhaps is only meant for her, though Lance picks it up as well. “Easily,” she growls. “With just the right bit of motivation.”

Her hand begins to glow, dark tendrils of magic crackling in the air.

Lance raises his gun.

Haggar fits her body behind Allura's. “If you shoot, she _dies_.”

Allura stares coolly at Lance.

Lance stares back.

He fires.

 

It's over. The mission is done.

Is it what he really wanted?

 

 

**8 Days Before**

“You had _no right_.”

“What were you thinking?”

“You got fucking lucky.”

“I knew what I was doing,” Lance growls at the faces surrounding him. “Allura knew what she was doing.”

“What the fuck, Lance.”

“You—you—ugh.”

“That was pushing it, even coming from me.”

“Never again, Lance.”

“Well, we _won_ , didn't we?” Lance spits. “It won't need to happen again.”

If they had just had a little fucking _faith_.

Weaklings.

Maybe he _should_ have shot Allura. Then at least there'd be one less person to yell at him about almost getting her killed.

 

 

**The Day Of**

The Espinoza household stands before Lance. It's structure is old and weather-worn, wooden porch aged and rickety. The Castle of Lions takes up a large space on the street, encroaching into the neighboring orange grove. The others had taken pods to get to their respective Earth residences. Allura hadn't let any of them take the lions.

Hunk had offered to come with Lance. Lance had declined on the basis that it wouldn't be necessary.

He goes to the door and knocks. There's the telltale shuffling of life from within the enclosure, and then the door opens.

It its place stands Isabella Espinoza, the second youngest. She stares, frozen, for a long moment. Then, first, her bottom lip trembles. Then the tears falls. Then comes the embrace, accompanied by a string of colorful expletives.

“Isabella?” a voice calls from within the house. Footsteps. “Isabella, who—”

Silence.

Lance stares over Isabella's head. When he last saw her, she came up to his chest. Now, to his shoulder. They've both grown.

In comparison, the women staring at him from the entryway looks much smaller.

Ada Espinoza. Lance's mother, he supposes. That's who she should be to him. Though it doesn't seem quite right to call her that now.

She lets out a choked, disbelieving noise.

“Hello,” Lance says.

“It's you—” his... mother breathes out. “Where have you _been_?”

“They s-said you were d-dead,” Isabella adds, sobbing into Lance's clothes.

“Space,” Lance answers.

Isabella pulls back enough to look at him with red-rimmed bug eyes. “ _What_?”

Lance gestures behind him. “Space,” he repeats. “In a castle that is also a ship. With a flying robot lion.”

“Are you high? Is that why you disappeared, because you've been on drugs the entire time?”

Lance lets out an exasperated breath. “If you look behind me, you will see there's a castle. It is also a ship.”

Isabella peers around Lance's body. Lance takes the opportunity of her distraction to pry her limbs off him.

“Holy shit.”

“Isabella, don't encourage—”

“No, Mom, he's not— _come look_.”

Looking a mix of angry, shocked, and desperate, Lance's parent walks to the door. She looks out and gasps.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Isabella says.

Something must click in Ada Espinoza's mind, because she turns to Lance with something akin to awe in her expression. Reaching out, she places her palms on his cheeks, pressing into his skin.

“It... really...” she breathes out, patting over his cheeks, his shoulders, his hair. “ _Lance._ ”

And with that, Lance is swept into the second hug of his return.

“Come in, come in,” Isabella says, tugging at Lance's shirt. “I can't believe it's you.”

Slowly, Lance makes his way into the house. Isabella's mother leads the way into a living area, where she directs Lance to take a seat on the couch. He complies.

She stands before him, looking him over.

“I'll... go call everyone,” Isabella offers. Her footsteps fade away.

“Good idea,” her mother murmurs. “It's really you.”

Lance stays silent.

“What is this?” she asks, tracing a finger over the markings around Lance's eyes.

Lance blinks at her. “I don't know, exactly. Something I encountered while on a mission, most likely. I think after those appeared, I stopped caring whether or not you ever gave up on trying to find me.”

Ada Espinoza sucks in a breath. “Of course we never gave up! Right until the end when they proclaimed you dead we kept looking!”

“But you did give up,” Lance points out. “Eventually. It's okay. I would have given up on me too, back then. I was so much weaker when I left.”

“We... never stopped loving you,” she protests weakly, lip trembling.

“Huh,” Lance says. “I guess that's supposed to mean something. Love means very little to me now. Does it matter when I'm so much stronger?”

“Stronger?” Isabella's mother echoes softly.

“Yes, stronger,” Lance confirms. He raises his palm and summons the heat in his core. A tiny dancing flame erupts from his fingertips, but only three of them. It's a work in progress. “I'm getting stronger too,” he continues, ignoring the disbelieving expression staring at him. “A few quintants ago I couldn't do that.”

“...quintants?”

A bark erupts from somewhere in the house. The pit-pat of animal feet announces the approach of a medium-sized brown dog.

“You got a dog,” Lance observes.

This seems to snap Ada Espinoza away from the previous topic, delving back into some realm of normalcy.

“Uh, yes. His name is Bax. When you left... Jonathon took it hard. We thought getting an animal...”

“Would replace me?” Lance offers. There's no malice in his tone, only inquiry.

“Of course not! We... thought he might be a comfort.”

Lance reaches out his hand towards the dog. It sniffs disdainfully at Lance's fingertips before backing up. A growl pulls from its chest.

Lance frowns.

Ada Espinoza frowns as well. “Bax, no. Bad. Bad dog.” She bends over and picks him up, placing him on the couch next to Lance.

Bax proceeds to increase the noise of his displeasure. Lance reaches for him, placing a palm over the back of the dog's neck. Bax tries to snap at him, but Lance ignores the motion, simply reflexively moving his hand away before he pushes the animal into a resting position.

The growling doesn't stop, but as long as Lance keeps his hand on the dog's neck, he can't attack him.

“Weird...”

Lance regards the animal coolly, and then turns to Isabella's mother. “Well, I suppose since I'm back you won't be needing him anymore, anyway.”

Lance let's his grip tighten, lets his palm heat with anger. Insolent animal, ignorant when it faces a greater beast and instead of bowing, bites. The dog whimpers, cracks. Lance lets his muscles relax. The animal no longer tries to bite him.

Ada Espinoza has horror etched into her features, like a statue frozen by the stare of Medusa, locked in endless terror.

She makes a choked noise. “What _are_ you?”

Lance shrugs. “I don't know anymore. I suppose it's up for debate.”

Isabella returns from the other room. She can't see the dead thing on the couch next to Lance from her position. But she can see her mother's expression turn from horrified to loathing. “What's... going on?”

“This is some sort of fucked-up trick,” Ada Espinoza growls, low as the dead dog before her. “You're one of those _things_ that fell out of the sky. You're just playing with us because you get off on other people's pain. Get the fuck out of my house, _creature_.”

“What the hell—Mom!”

“Get out,” snarls Ada Espinoza. “You're not my son. _Get out_.”

“Mom—” Isabella starts quietly.

But Lance is already gone.

 

Back in his room in the Castle, Lance looks at himself in the mirror. This is the product of the war they fought; this is who he is after years facing what no kid should ever have to deal with.

This is who he is now, whoever that may be.

The door to his room opens. Lance doesn't turn. He hears Allura's voice. “In here.”

“Lance?” Isabella's voice echoes timidly in the sparsely decorated room. Lance had thrown out all the trinkets and tidbits he'd once collected from planets after a while. They were useless, anyway. Sentimental, unnecessarily so. Though he kept the torn claw from Des, had it made into a necklace when he threw everything else out so he could carry it with him.

“Do you need something?” Lance asks. His gaze flickers to look at Isabella in the mirror, and then he returns to staring at his reflection.

“I believe you,” Isabella says softly. “I never gave up hope—I always knew you'd come back.”

The mirror stares back. Glowing embers for eyes, decorated by intricate flames scarred into his skin. Purple veins just peeking out from his collar—the tip of the iceberg, hinting at where they caress across his chest and thighs, spreading like poison. Perhaps they are. The sharpness of his gaze, of his teeth, of his reflexes. The hunger in his blood for more, more, more. Greedy. The metallic sheen just under his cold skin—alive, maybe, but something in him, dead. Those are only the things Lance can pinpoint. There must be so much more than that.

“I killed your dog,” Lance informs her. He turns to Isabella, and cocks his head at her. “Did I come back?”

Isabella looks taken aback, confused, concerned. “What? Of—of course you did! You're right here, Lance!”

“Did Lance come back?”

Isabella's bottom lip wobbles. “W-what do you mean? You're Lance.”

He smiles. “No,” he says. “I'm not. Not anymore.”

 

**The Day After**

Allura says they can stay longer on Earth.

But there's nothing here for him. He's not sure if there's anything for him, anywhere. Maybe one day he'll find it. Maybe one day he'll become so alien that instead the humanity will infect him.

But for now: he walks into the control room where Allura's going over the star maps.

She glares at him. Angry. Indignant. Scared.

Helpless.

“Let's go,” he says.

Wordlessly, Allura obeys.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so thanks for seeing this sucker through to the end
> 
> Go check out [the awesome art for the story made by Miranda and show your love with a rebloop!](http://cupcakeismynamebitchez.tumblr.com/post/171251644706/this-is-the-art-for-resamilles-wonderful-story)
> 
> this fic is a lowkey Risk of Rain AU and tbh is kinda my love letter to that game. the chapter titles are from the final text of the game. so. that's a thing. this fic also takes insp from house of many doors (rotting feast? yeah. thanks silent minister now pls go fuck yourself. also @ HOMD give me more city of masks lore pls i'm dying of starvation). definitely check out HOMD if you ever get the chance. the writing in that game is absolutely stunning and i have nothing but endless praises for it. (except for sandy. i loved her and she left me with nothing but expensive dinner bills, damn her.)


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